{"id":14225,"date":"2011-10-13T15:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejoycollective.co.uk\/blog\/?p=14225"},"modified":"2011-11-04T16:06:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T16:06:00","slug":"jens-lekman-lia-ices-thekla-bristol-18-10-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/preview\/jens-lekman-lia-ices-thekla-bristol-18-10-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Jens Lekman \/ Lia Ices : Thekla, Bristol : 18.10.11"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Jens Lekman probably gets misunderstood a lot, and\u00a0followers of his music and his blog musings might well surmise that he quite enjoys the fact; even cultivates it, perhaps.\u00a0\u00a0An unabashed pop songwriter, a writer of love songs,\u00a0he can be deadpan, self-effacing and deliciously mordant\u00a0but never shows a hint of\u00a0Stephin Merritt’s raised eyebrow, say,\u00a0or Rufus Wainwright’s\u00a0theatricality.\u00a0 Rather, his studiously\u00a0northern-European take on classic pop forms resonates with the same love for the form, magpie curiosity and cool detatchment as Erlend Oye, Edwyn Collins or compatriots Tough Alliance.<\/p>\n

The careful pace of his sporadic releases since 2004 belies the seriousness with which he takes his craft; there’s a fascinating imprecision to his methods, though, as if he’d methodically carved a perfect template and then traced around it with his weaker hand.\u00a0 The pop, soul and indie samples and interpolations that he’s folded into his work since day one – from Beat Happening, Arab Strap and Belle & Sebastian to Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, The Shangri-Las and\u00a0The Left Banke – can be a sweetly clumsy, uncomfortable fit, but only add to a sense of timelessness created by the sweeping strings, Motown handclaps, dry but affecting first-person lyrics and Lekman’s soaring baritone croon.\u00a0 These echoes of the past are something he clearly feels are integral, but at the same time not something to be hero-worshipped; the way vocal and string parts are shoehorned into the mix (and his own well-documented frustrations with sample clearance law) are romantic, frustrated idealism writ\u00a0large.\u00a0\u00a0It’s intoxicating stuff.<\/p>\n

Of course, you could just swoon to the soul rhythms, the disco strings, the indiepop heart-tugging and the colour-coded live band of Jean Seberg-esque Swedish girls.\u00a0 Probably way more fun than over-thinking it.\u00a0 It’s just pop music, after all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tuesday 18th October
\nJens Lekman<\/strong> – jenslekman.com<\/a>
\nLia Ices<\/strong> – liaices.com <\/a><\/p>\n

Thekla, The Grove, East Mud Dock, Bristol BS1 4RB
\nEARLY SHOW: Doors 7pm \/ \u00a313 adv \/ Ages 18+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Jens Lekman probably gets misunderstood a lot, and\u00a0followers of his music and his blog musings might well surmise that he quite enjoys the fact; even cultivates it, perhaps.\u00a0\u00a0An unabashed pop songwriter, a writer of love songs,\u00a0he can be deadpan, self-effacing and deliciously mordant\u00a0but never shows a hint of\u00a0Stephin Merritt’s raised eyebrow, say,\u00a0or Rufus Wainwright’s\u00a0theatricality.\u00a0 Rather, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":14226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[458],"tags":[476,2179,2180,497],"class_list":["post-14225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-preview","tag-bristol","tag-jens-lekman","tag-lia-ices","tag-thekla"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}