Jens Lekman - 10.03.26 - La Bellevilloise

Walking in slightly later than scheduled, Gothenburg's Mythologen have already played their set and the atmosphere is relaxed. The ticket check at the Bellevilloise doubles as an entrance to its smoking area, and the Parisian audience has gathered outside to get in a last smoke amongst friends and strangers before Jens Lekman takes the stage.

Walking down the stairs, you can already hear the piercing noise from the toilet hand dryer, another indication of an empty stage. Upon opening the door to the main stage area, there is an inviting soft yellow-tinged light drowning the room. People are sitting on the edges of the floor, mingling, getting drinks. The crowd skews slightly older but every now and then you'll spot someone in their 20s too. People are spread across the concert hall, with margins of empty space around them, not seeking to invade anybody else's personal space. Polite. The room is lukewarm, both physically and mentally. The two of us squeeze past some people into an empty pocket three rows from the stage.

After some time, a man comes into the spotlight with a smiling Jens and his backing band following. He's wearing a white button-up and a formal suit with meticulously arranged dollar bills peeking out of his breast pocket, holding the Songs for Other People's Weddings novel by David Levithan and Jens Lekman. With a North American accent, he introduces himself as Jens' tour manager as well as the narrator for the show. He begins to set up the story we are about to embark on: we learn about two protagonists, J, a wedding singer who feels his life is ending, and V (Hannah Smallbone on keys and vocals), who feels hers is just beginning, a story of long-distance romance and of love as change. As the show went on and this narrator kept returning to the stage, it became increasingly impressive how little he actually needed to read from the book, making his performance very convincing.

As announced on Lekman's Instagram, the dress code for the tour was: dress as a song title. His backing band obliged accordingly. Isak Hedtjärn on sax, flute and clarinet dressed as "Autumn Leaves", Johan Hjalmarsson on drums as "Rhinestone Cowboy", and Mattias Rörström on bass guitar as "2 Become 1”.

The theatrical elements created a noticeably stronger connection between audience and artist than is often seen on smaller stages, where the energy is harder to build and the routine of walking out and going through a setlist with perhaps a couple of superficial audience interactions tends to go unquestioned. The addition of a narrator and each band member dressed in a distinct costume instantly grew our curiosity. The narration also made us more attentive to the lyrics, which carried the story, making it easier for us to follow along from the start. The experience shifted from passive listening to active engagement, allowing us to connect and empathise with the characters, going beyond simply swaying to beautiful melodies. It helped contextualise their emotional states and allowed subtler details to come through, such as the love stories nested within the central romance between J and V, details that, without the theatrical framing, could have slipped past entirely. It’s clear that without these details the show wouldn't have carried as well.

The set, much like the album itself, was well-structured, with songs functioning as both standalone moments and chapters in a larger emotional story. From "The First Lovesong" to "The Last Lovesong," we were taken on a journey through the beautiful and witty ballads of Jens Lekman's latest concept album, Songs for Other People's Weddings, inspired by his real-life experience as a wedding singer. As he mentioned during the set, the requests to perform at people's weddings began following the release of his 2004 song "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding).”

Through uplifting, ABBA-inflected guitar-pop tracks as well as gentler, slower pieces, Jens told the stories of the couples who hired him, his own love story, and even wove in a tale of unrequited love between two Médecins Sans Frontières volunteers nested within another love story, proving this to be genuinely novelistic work, one which travelled all the way from Gothenburg to Brooklyn to Leipzig.

There was also some genuinely impressive centre-stage twirling from V, the cowboy fringing on her sleeves giving her wings to fly away from the fictional relationship. Details such as this gave the set a tinge more dynamism and helped us relate to J and V's love story.

A quick glance behind us: the room was comfortably full but not over the top. The people to our left were exuding high energy, hip-swinging and mouthing along to lyrics, some with their eyes closed and in their own world, others fixed on one of the excellent musicians on stage.

After exclaiming that when he works as a wedding singer he does the reception first and the after-party second, Jens announced we were now in the after-party section of the set, roughly half an hour of his best-known songs from previous albums, with gems such as "The Opposite of Hallelujah", "I Know What Love Isn't", and of course closing with "A Postcard to Nina”.

Throughout, Jens appeared on stage exuding the same kindness and gentleness that his music does. In a room full of strangers, the Swede managed to make everyone feel like the evening had been made just for them, sending us out into the Parisian night a little warmer than when we came in.