The Justice

The discussion of Wikipedia came about during the encore, which lasted almost 30 minutes. (Said Jens, "The night is young. I just want to keep playing songs.") Lekman played the six or seven songs of the encore with little to no accompaniment, at one point singing to a karimba, often referred to as the African thumb piano. During the encore Lekman played what I thought was the highlight of the evening: "Shirin," a song from Kortedala about his hairdresser who ran a salon out of her apartment across the street from his. I'll confess; I hadn't listened to all of Kortedala before coming to the show, and "Shirin" was a new song to me.

A nearly a cappella version of "Pocket Full of Money" off Oh You're So Silent Jens also wowed the audience, who kept Lekman onstage after each song of the encore with requests for more. Lekman engaged the audience to sing the chorus of "Pocket Full of Money" as well as fill in the saxophone parts by whistling.

Though the Paradise's rather unpleasant layout (three columns in the middle of the main audience area and the bar in the middle of the traffic jam at the entrance) and location (west of Boston University, at the Pleasant Street stop on the Green Line B) make going to shows there less exciting than the Middle East or the now-bulldozed Avalon, the club consistently gets such acts as Jens Lekman that the Boston concertgoing public must drag themselves down Commonwealth Avenue to see them on a regular basis. Fortunately, this time Lekman and friends charmed the audience into oblivion as they hopped around the stage and offered up the energetic, sweet pop Jens is known for.

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