LENKA DELIGHTS AT LE POISSON ROUGE

“So I’ve just released my fourth album. It’s very, very happy. Even more so than you’d expect,” laughed Australian indie-pop artist Lenka, perhaps the cutest thing that’s happened to New York City. On Wednesday she headlined the stage at Le Poisson Rouge, accompanied by her three-piece band. Playing to a seated audience, Lenka kept the energy alive by adding quirky details before each song, giving the crowd some background on her writing inspiration. “I wrote this next song while I was pregnant, from the perspective of the baby growing inside me. The track is made from my boy’s heartbeat, we stole it while we were at the doctors,” she explained before starting the haunting ballad “Two Heartbeats.”

Lenka

Lenka and Nick Howard

Alternating between a keyboard, tambourine, and tiny keytar, Lenka showcased the full breadth of her musical talents. After a duet with opener and tourmate Nick Howard, she soon followed with her acclaimed song “The Show,” made famous for its cover in the movie Moneyball. Leaving the stage for a bit, Lenka returned for a memorable encore that involved the whole audience. “We’re going to do an encore performance of the first song we played [“Blue Skies”], but you get to choose the genre. We’ve got five going right now, country western, swing jazz, bossanova, r&b, and reggae.” Judged by the loudest applause, reggae won the genre battle and the catchy song was re-played with a slower, bass-heavy twist. Ending on “The Bright Side,” echoing the name of her latest album, Lenka and her band trickled off the stage to a delighted crowd.