How Swede it is...

Fickle, fickle me. Apologies to the inhabitants of the supermagicdiscoveryworld. No excuses - just lame mumblings about being, y'know, out of touch and feeling a bit sheepish. That and a cup of joe collided with my laptop one morn while on my way out the door to Italian classes. Rest assured however, it's just about five weeks til I depart for my own supermagic discovery of Italy, London, various bits of France, Germany and Korea so there'll be plenty of discovering to be done.

So, the latest addition to the supermagicdiscoveries is this: there's nothing like a Swede to make you feel good. And I'm not talking tubers here. Athough tubas might be closer to the mark. Jens Lekman. Lovely Jens. Even the Swedish boy frantically describing all the cultural references about Sweden in the songs and then randomly groping his girlfriend couldn't put me off. It's interesting when you go to these gigs and see the kind of fans you never knew existed. Like the impecably dressed almost forty somethings that looked like the kind of indie-grownups I want to age into being. Like the rotund man with one leg six inches shorter than the other. The beardy, hoodie wearing bloke who drank beer and munched on potato chips secreted in the pouch of aforementioned hoodie. And of course all the usual indie hipsters who bounced up and down placidly and cheered (in Swedish) for Jens to come on for his encore.
If Morrissey is a product of Manchester's gloom then Jens' take on life in the quiet suburbs of Sweden is an altogether lighter sweeter affair - despite the fact he's still doing the same take on the whole "get me outta here" teenage longing. Moz is all "every day is like Sunday," tea and toast, sexual longing. Jens is all about Friday night bingo, local hicks and google maps. You know you're listening to someone special when they tell you that they "wrote this song when I was 18" and then play a little homage to Moz like "Black Cab" which doesn't even sound like a bad Smiths parody but an actual song. (And even better, Jens actually seems like a nice child prodigy - not some straggly looking Bright Eyes-esque hipster. One thing I reckon you could bet your bingo winnings on is that Jens is not cherry picking groupies to fuck after the show like ole BrightEyes. And, hey, even if he is, he's the kind've guy who's going to go round bragging about it afterwards - those Swedes have decorum).

That thing about the black cabs though is a pickle... In England, at least, it's the mini cabs you've got to stay clear of - black cabs are a luxury for the rich, the hurried, the single female traveller and, in my experience at least, the drunken who need to be sure they can make it home in one piece.

Jens makes me happy. He makes me happier when I see him in person and feel the need to bop around like I did when I was 17. He also makes me want to run away from this town and find somewhere else to live. Maybe Sweden?