•
Rating: In times when the PlayStation could at most cause damage in a mediocre science fiction novel and the prince of games was still the indestructible and colorful Lego blocks, there was always some imaginative friend of ours who managed to amaze and annoy you at the same time. With your own bricks, with which you racked your brains to build the usual car or at most a modest little house, he, a budding Gaudí, managed to create a cathedral or a spaceship more credible than Captain Kirk’s Enterprise.
The more I listen to his latest album, "Night Falls Over Kortedala," the more I am convinced that the young Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman must have been part of that category of child prodigies. Indeed, with the same "materials," surely numerous but limited, that many others use to craft pop songs, he is capable of composing innovative songs, "original", that evoke surprise and, at least in my case, unconditional admiration. Certainly, the filigree is clearly visible, it is possible, as in a Foscolian poem, to trace back to all the inspirational models. But the amalgam is almost always perfect and the seams so well hidden that they make you believe you are in front of a soft, warm, unique fabric. This ability brings him quite close to another inimitable modern alchemist: Beck.
The sequence of the ten tracks that compose "Night Falls..." highlights not only this ability of his to cleverly use the best patterns of the most sophisticated and artistic pop, from Brian Wilson to Bacharach from Scott Walker to Morrissey, but also to hybridize them with simpler, more immediate, and popular melodic structures. Yet, in the variety of sounds, suggestions, inventions, an offering of delights that you can admire only in the showcase of a renowned pastry shop, there is a red thread that ties everything together: an underlying naivety, an almost adolescent gaze on life, with its intense and sudden enthusiasms inextricably intertwined with deep, enduring, and poorly concealed melancholies. The first intense track, "And I Remember Every Kiss", is of clear Walkerian descent, not the latest darker Scott, but the one from "Rosemary" to be precise, with an orchestral arrangement truly well-calculated, that touches the right chords. With "Sipping On the Sweet Nectar" we are instead in the realm of an unlikely but delightful disco-music, reminiscent a bit of Van McCoy and somewhat of the madeleines baked by the excellent Josh Rouse in the recollections of "1972". There’s also a declaration of affection for the sister, "The Opposite of Hallelujah", a light and flowery song, like a little 60s dress, with bucolic violins and choirs to further enhance the enchantment.
"A Postcard to Nina" evokes images of enchanted tropics, of multicolored dreams, a melancholic calypso alternating with a kind of rap(!). But where Jens’ genius appears more evident is in songs like "Into Eternity", a sort of wonderful patchwork that naturally and surprisingly keeps together the gentle melody of a kind of fipple flute, rhythms that seem borrowed from an old Bontempi, and the sound of an accordion that, little by little, transforms the song from pop-country-western into a revised and corrected version of "La Colegiala". But such talented complexities are not always necessary to assert his worth: "You Arms Around Me" is simply a magnificent song, with his warm leading voice.
Once again from the cold north come light and warmth, a mild current whose generating center is not the Gulf of Mexico, but a neighborhood in Gothenburg, Kortedala, native wild village of our dear Jens Lekman.
Tracklist Lyrics 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
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
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.
"Your Arms Around Me" reaches unexpected heights of sweetness without giving you a toothache.
By nino
Jens Lekman is currently the most updated compendium on the movement of popular music.
Jens Lekman: poet, Franciscan, sound sculptor: I love you.
