Oh you’re not so silent, Jens. Photo by Kimberly Chun.
If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then Swedish indie pop maestro Jens Lekman must be feeling pretty swell: by his own estimation, he’s accrued an army of faux MySpace and Facebook followers-poseurs since he took his own MySpace site down. The 27-year-old singer-songwriter – currently based in Melbourne, Australia, though not, he claims, for long – is embracing both the love and fictitious narratives being spun by his Jens puppets/impersonators, and likewise, he encouraged me to make up more outta-hand tales when I spoke to him at the eerily generic, brass ‘n’ business-class Omni Hotel in Austin, Texas, during South by Southwest.
We’ll see how wild it gets – and how crazy Lekman will be tonight, March 23, at Bottom of the Hill, when he plays solo, sans band, and full of, he promises, surprises.
SFBG: What have you seen at South by Southwest so far?
Jens Lekman: Tough Alliance – it’s really interesting because they’re such a Swedish phenomenon in one way. I think they’re the most influential band in Sweden right now. But it’s so hard – the crowd there at that place, I think, were a bunch of bloggers, who were like, “Hmm, what should I think about this,” you know. And they got so frustrated because they’re very much about energy. They play for 10 minutes and they just go offstage.
SFBG: Do you get that tough blogger crowd?
JL: No, when I play in New York, maybe. I think I’ve always had those people standing there smiling. That’s my favorite reaction.
SFBG: Any superfans?
JL: I met this guy last night, this 45-year-old guy. Well, I dunno if he’s 45 but he’s in his 40s. He’s going to see eight shows, I think, on this tour, with his whole family, and they’re organizing this big barbecue party in Madison when we get there.
SFBG: So the last album, Night Falls Over Kortedala [Secretly Canadian, 2007], is a collection of older songs? What made you want to put them out in an album format?
JL: Yeah, I think all my albums have been like that. They’ve always been a collection of what I’ve been doing in the last three or four years. I just write songs – that’s all I do. I can’t put them together into an entity. So this time I had a bunch of friends pick them for me. I gave them about 30 songs, and they called me up and had a little bit of a Eurovision song contest. They’d say, “Song number eight – that’s definitely 10 points, yeah, and song number seven, that’s seven points.” I think I’ll do that in the future as well. It works so well. They saw the golden thread through the songs that I couldn’t see myself. I always had a problem with putting things together like that. I couldn’t see the connection myself.