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Music, like jewelry, is about personal taste. You should never buy it without the consent of the party in question. With one exception. Free Tickets.

This is how I ended up spending my Friday night in an almost abandoned Montpellier back lot studio (now I really understanding of back lot) listening to this elfin, blond Swede prance around the stage with his fine array of guitars.

It was difficult at first, not to be puzzled by this veritable unknown – to know whether he’s just a teenager puffing back too much weed – or actually a pretty intelligent, if intense, young man; despite the hair-in-his-eyes, he brushes away so many times to tuck behind his ears, you want to buy him a headband (or maybe a dress).

For all the hair shaking, the inability to mold his body to a rhythm without looking like a gangly 15-year old at a high school dance party; surprisingly Von Poehl can actually sing and play a guitar. He also has the impeccable gift (purposeful or no) of comic timing; never finishing his sentences (one wonders if he speaks in the same way in his mother tongue) and seeming perfectly at ease in front standing in front of the mic in blank silence while he thinks about what to say next. He may have the look of poor teen that’s forgotten his lines at a high school speech competition, but there’s no ‘poor’ about it. Von Poehl is not in any hurry and nor should his audience be. One gets the feeling that he knows just the effect that he’s having; and as he stands there and smiles so beguilingly, one cannot help but be drawn in by his kind of wishful innocence. Plus the feeling that he’s just generally a nice guy.

It’s then kind of a shock when he opens his mouth and spills out, ‘I’m so lonely, I could die.’ You actually want to get up on the stage and wrap him in your arms. His lyrics traverse a mix of different themes; a mélange of young Simon & Garfunkel (hopscotch on the sidewalk/silent as gold), childhood memories and  pondering on the many questions in life that seem to occupy this overwrought, gifted singer.

Even if he did look a bit like an over-excited Labrador bouncing on a podium – aka. child pretending to be a rock star – you couldn’t deny the obvious joy in his performance. Almost as if his the guitar was like a portal to his heart, just the means of letting all in the dam out. I have to admit, it made me slightly jealous just to watch this display of passion; what most of us wouldn’t give for an outlet so tangible, and apparently therapeutic.

Von Poehl may be starting out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll see him sometime soon on the charts in a few years. At least in his home country, Sweden.

His new album, May Day is due to be released in France this week.

I’m almost tempted to go for a second night to see him play in Arles, just to get that hug in… could be a story worth telling five years down the track if things go his way. But I’ll hold off.

This guy is just too nice. And surely that’s a good enough reason to buy anyone’s album.