One would hope that talented musicians with a following are adequately rewarded to sustain their art, without having to take on odd jobs.
So it may be a little dispiriting to learn that Jens Lekman, the Swedish singer-songwriter with a singular style, has augmented his career by playing more than 130 weddings over the years. Maybe he does it for the extra income, or perhaps he’s gathering material. Most likely it’s because he’s a nice guy with a disarmingly direct connection to his fans (he vows to respond to all fan emails on his website, and I can attest to his generosity in that he played a benefit concert for one of my daughter’s friends badly hurt in a car accident years ago).
At any rate, his time playing for couples on their big day led to more of his own creativity with his latest album, Songs for Other People’s Weddings. It’s a concept album about a fictional wedding singer, named J, who goes a step further by first meeting with couples, learning their stories, and writing new wedding songs just for them.
In the story, he meets a girl also identified with an initial, V, and follows her from Gothenburg, Sweden, to New York, only to see them break up. If it sounds like a good romantic yarn, that’s what the popular young adult fiction author David Levithan (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) thought as well. Together, they came up not only with lyrics and direction for the album, but Levithan also wrote his own novel with the same name, Songs for Other People’s Weddings, issued in tandem with the book.
All this to say that Lekman’s tour, which played Union Stage in DC late last month, was presented as part rock opera and part book reading, with Levithan himself (in a t-shirt that said Author and sport coat pockets filled with dozens of pencils) coming out between every few songs to read.
With Levithan doing all the talking, it was almost as if Lekman had paid him to handle between-song banter. But a story emerged, and there was sort of a set, with Alesander Palmestål’s colorful impressionist album cover art blown up behind them. And there were even costumes, with Lekman in a white suit with a sort of boutonniere, looking like he was ready to play another wedding gig. Bassist Mattias Rörstöm sported the most complex costume—with a dummy surrealistically affixed to him to perfectly embody the song “A Tuxedo Sewn for Two.”
The album was presented roughly in order and slightly trimmed down. Keyboardist Hannah Smallbone brought the vocals that Matilda Sargren did on the album, becoming the very voice of V in the back-and-forth of their emotional entanglement. On “You Have One New Message,” she heartbreakingly lets him know, via phone message, that they shouldn’t ought to see each other again.
And there was real emotion conveyed in the songs and the narrative, such that the nimble group Lekman assembled could easily take the next step and create a staged musical if they so desired (minus the book reading). As it was, the songs, accompanied by sax, flute, and clarinet by Isak Hedtjärn and drummer Johan Hjalmarsson, in elaborate rhinestone cowboy attire, made the work akin to the agreeable chamber pop of Magnetic Fields or Sufjan Stevens.
Musically, the piece moved from yearning folk-pop to a disco beat suitable for the afterparty. And when it was complete, the encore, nearly as long as the main show, provided favorites from his catalog that also weren’t far from the romantic parameters of the main set, with “Black Cab” and “I Know What Love Isn’t.”
Longtime fans, who had patiently taken in a full set of new material, were rewarded with songs they loved. And Lekman, notably looser in approach, and back to his own charming banter between songs, felt freed as well, likening it to a reception after the ceremony.
The show was opened by a similarly intriguing performer doing her own unique set. Yi-Mei Templeman, who performs under the name yeemz, came out with a cello and began an engrossing classical piece, before flipping the big instrument on its side and playing it like a guitar for the rest of her set.
It added more depth to the sound than she would have had on a guitar, but it was her clever and incisive songs that seemed to take the spotlight. When she introduced one called “The Beta Problem”—about a situation defined as not bad enough to require change—even Levithan marveled at how useful a metaphor it was to the kind of relationships he wrote about.
