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Rating:
It has already been written about, but it wasn't enough. It will never be enough to silence me in the pink zone where words are too many, where everything is superfluous. The voice, the arrangements, the lyrics.
Jens Lekman is currently the most updated compendium on the movement of popular music. Burt Bacharach would envy him, Elvis Costello would copy him, Dylan would strum chords on "Night Falls Over Kortedala". The ultimate right now.
If you've never asked yourself where happiness lies, well, ask yourself and while searching for the answer, let your minutes drip into the dazzling expanse of lights and chromatic ups and downs marked by strings and the almighty brass of "Sipping On The Sweet Nectar"; if you haven't asked yourself yet, ask yourself after the tum tum tum cha that smells of wonders and first kisses, petals, mazes, Europe, and Americas arm in arm in the autumnal jig playing in "The Opposite of Halleluja", a drumming jam session with rhyme triangulations and a piano played by the fingertips of an angel. If you're still hesitating, if you're still wavering on the meaning and place, then "A postcard To Nina" will help you find courage and answers: the ringing of lesbian chimes in a story of simulated love and dissimulated homosexuality colored by chorus coming directly from a certain perfectly baroque and luxurious coffee-latte soulman, like a letter posted from the station of the ending heart, and when we're on our knees, spinning with stars like in the cartoon, he goes: "yours truly, Jens Lekman". CHILLS.
And then, even the concrete hearts with thorns will crumble, the violins will apostrophize the collapse, and we will all float intoxicated by noble gases that euphorize among the birds and trinkets of "Shirin", an extraordinary love story at the hairdresser's told by the small steps of a little voice that hops, goes up and down between constellations, accelerations, and brakes on an oxygenated caterpillar ride.
And then when we all ask ourselves what happiness is, then, only then will we be dancing "Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo", with Travolta's hair, with popcorn in hand, cradled by the saxophone that never stops, flattened on daddy's Cadi, many fake bachelite novels of a technicolor screenplay directed by this man to whom, volens aut nolens, one bows. Happiness is this: happiness in small things.
Jens Lekman: poet, Franciscan, sound sculptor: I love you.
Ps: the length of the sentences is intentional. Jens Lekman's talent is such that it makes me write these things, me, the sandwich-loving metalhead-punk-rebel.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
02 Sipping on the Sweet Nectar (04:11)
You remember your first kiss?
Well how can I forget?
My hand still shivers
from the very thought of it
Well sometimes I almost regret it
like I regret my regrets
I see myself on my deathbed saying
"I wish I would have loved less"
But that's when the feeling hits
so just lick your lips
these are the good times that you'll miss
when you are sipping on the sweet nectars
of your memories
Just take a sip
and let it wet your lips
you won't understand all this until you're
sipping on the sweet nectar of your memories
Last night I ran into my old life
still waiting for someone at the station
someone who never made it into my new life
so I called up Lisa
'cause she's my only friend
"Lisa I don't know anymore,
every heartbeat needs a reason"
She said
"That's when the feeling hits
so just lick your lips
can you smell the spring time in the breeze
you gotta start sipping on the sweet nectars
of your memories"
I take a sip
I let it wet my lips
I think back on that kiss
I gotta start sipping on the sweet nectar
That's when the feeling hits
03 The Opposite of Hallelujah (04:21)
I took my sister down to the ocean
But the ocean made me feel stupid
Those words of wisdom I had prepared
All seemed to vanish into thin air
Into the waves I stared
I picked up a seashell
To illustrate my homelessness
But a crab crawled out of it
Making it useless
And all my metaphors fell flat
Down on the rocks where we sat
She asked where are you at?
But sister, it's the opposite of hallelujah
It's the opposite of being you
You don't know 'cause it just passes right through you
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
We made our way home on the bikes we had borrowed
I still never told you about unstoppable sorrow
You still think I'm someone to look up to
I still don't know anything about you
Is it in you too?
You've got so much to live for, little sister
You've got so much to live for
But sister, it's the opposite of hallelujah
It's the opposite of being you
You don't know cause it just passes right through you
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
You don't know what I'm going through
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By feelingsinister
What ultimately makes us prefer this artist over many other singer-songwriters is precisely his open-mindedness and the skillful (non) freshness of his orchestrations.
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