Jens Lekman

When all that Christmas really presents is end of year lists, endless scope for talking-head nostalgia and air thicker with down_ than a post-nuclear peat bog it’s important that there are lights to cut through the fug. New beacons to momentarily blind people to the nagging mess of the last six decades or so, a teetering tip where warped old Sinatra vinyl sits contemptuously next to uncouth cuts from Messrs Holder and Wood. It’s also very dark in late December and it rains loads. This is a given, though, so no need for long sentences about the wind and the drizzle battering us as we head to Kilburn to see Jens Lekman.

Coming in, finally, from the bitter cold the warmth of a packed Luminaire is pretty blessed. The Clientele are onstage, shuffling awkward through some light whimsy. It’s pleasant and it fits, but it’s forgotten with the first errant howl of anticipation from Lekman’s crowd.

JENS LEKMAN

The two, three minutes linking that howl and Jens’s eventual apparition onstage are lost to support-triggered musing of my own. Highlights, lowlights – as one year blurs into the next it’s hard to place Jens Lekman, starry-eyes and drive-in croon and all. Some I know’d gag or frown at the sweetness of _‘Into Eternity’, the stripped-back paean to timelessness that opens the set and throws the Luminaire into a heavy, fragile silence. Others, a few of whom are here tonight, light up in the glow of it. Being firmly in the ‘yes’ camp, the waiting question – to be fair – was never really posed and tonight appreciation builds thick in the intimacy.

My head's lighter less cynicism, wilfully abandoned at the door, and throws off gravity altogether as Jens’s looped voice floats through and past the peat bog into a sultry noir lagoon. This is the thing – a lone, a duet, a trio, a quartet of voices reaching up through the notes in steps, the lilt filling out through the space and taking the skin off your eyes, giving weird richness to everything in the room. The walls, the pair of lonely spotlights, the unwinding disco-ball. He’s joined for a few songs by ‘Tammy’, a blonde drummer who beats along in favours to ‘A Sweet Summer’s Night On Hammer Hill’ and ‘Psychogirl’; assistance with the former from a crowd rapidly reduced to child-like. 'You Are the Light'.

TAMMY KARLSSON AND JENS LEKMAN

There’s a version of ‘A Postcard to Nina’ too, and one that benefits from its extended introduction, the singer reeling off about a German friend who told her ‘farder’ Jens was hers because dad couldn’t understand why she preferred girls. Ever the raconteur, there are bulging pocketfuls of story to turn out – the tales behind ‘Psychogirl’ (“Stop following me psychogirl / I have enough problems to deal with on my own.”) and a cover of Paul Simon’s _‘You Can Call Me Al’ that has become a set staple of late – before 'The Opposite of Hallelujah' bursts brilliantly into 'Give Me Just a Little More Time' and then, finally, the encore.

That encore was ‘Black Cab’, ‘Pocketful of Money’ and ‘Julie’ meaning that a) Jens Lekman can do without ‘And I Remember Every Kiss’ or ‘Maple Leaves’ and – subsequently – b) Jens Lekman may be an angel, or something. Their absence only aids the set in its reach towards perfection, its lone protagonist arranging the lights of his into some ageless constellation. Sickly sentimental doo-wop throwback? It goes further than that. Sure as Christmas is and always will be returning, Lekman’s voice gives me hope that eventually Sinatra and Martin will stop selling records in Decembers. Even if that hope is just a little bit of glimmer in the tack of the tinsel and chintz.

Back out into the drizzle, then.