Jens Lekman doesn't need blog hype; the NY Times review should suffice

Photo from ryandombal Flickr

We saw Jens Lekman Saturday night. The show was pretty slick but enjoyable. Opening a cappella Silver Ages were unnecessary, but people seemed to enjoy it.

photo from gaelenh flickr

I went to see the New Pornographers show on Wednesday night; it was kind of blah.

The good news is that both of the openers were good. Benjy Ferree and Emma Pollock played nice, fairly engaging sets.

Also in good news: the old NP songs are still great, and Dan Bejar is fun.

Why the blah? Carl Newman doesn't do much for me as a live performer. (Idea: give a lot of his parts to Kathryn Calder to sing). I like most of his songs on album, but live they've always felt thin.

I'm not a big fan of the new album. Maybe preordering the overkill box raised my expectations, but a lot of the new songs are just kind of boring.

For this show they had flute, french horn and strings going on. It was pretty unnecessary.
I thought the big light up sign was more dumb than cool. There were also sound issues and feedback while I was there.

The other recurring thought I had concerned how old the band seemed. But that's not really fair.