THE BLANK GENERATION

Jens Lekman, conqueror of Sweden, ponders world domination.

Jens Lekman is the most awkward crooner you’re likely to hear this year. He’s all of 23 and bloated with the sort of naïve confidence one associates with a six-year-old who just completed the inaugural trip around the block on a banana-seat bike freshly liberated of its training wheels. His voice—which can hop between comparisons to Morrissey, Jonathan Richman, and Stephin Merritt like hiccups—and his good looks—a fey Beck?—are his two biggest assets. And in America he’s looking to cash them in at a favorable exchange rate.

Lekman is from Goteborg, Sweden, where his music has recently been climbing the charts to the tune of a No. 2 radio single. In the States, he’s distributed by Bloomington, Indiana label Secretly Canadian. His music sounds distinctly un-American, both in terms of nuance and melodrama. That’s where the comparisons to Morrissey come in handy. Lekman writes almost exclusively about girls and the emotions they stir up in him. If we are to take his songs at face value, Lekman goes through women like a diner goes through dishwashers. There’s Lisa, Silvia, Julie, Maria, and “Psychogirl”—and those are just the ones mentioned by name. (Sara, I suppose, is the current fling as she earns a dedication on his new full-length.)

Possibly, being “the 15th sexiest man in Sweden”, as Lekman proclaims to be on his web site, has its downfalls. Like, fending off beautiful girl after beautiful girl. Or maybe it’s Lekman’s high standards that bring out the shopaholic in him. His choice of covers would indicate so. See “Someone to Share My Life With,” Lekman’s cover of a Television Personalities song that was also brushed off in the early ‘90s by Biff Bang Pow!:

I don’t want a girl who hangs on every word I say.
Shows me off to her parents over roast beef on Sunday.
I don’t want a girl who thinks she has to fake.
I don’t want a girl who laughs at every little joke I make.

I just want someone to share my life with.
…That someone could be you.

Ah, hopeless romanticism basking in ambivalence—it’s what Lekman does best. Sound familiar, fans of The Smiths? But Lekman’s musical personality shares as much common ground with Jonathan Richman’s lightheartedness and Stephin Merritt’s dry sense of humor as it does with Morrissey’s magnificent melodrama. The end result is an overarching approach that still ends up on-target more often than not.

Lekman has given his stateside critics plenty of chances to sour on his introspective bedroom pop over the past year—releasing three EPs and a full-length since February—and so far he’s walked away an indie media darling, garnering praise from Pop Matters and Pitchfork. On first listen of his full-length, I was sold after just four songs and hurriedly rushed an e-mail off to a friend bragging about my new find. “Buy it now!” would be a suitable summation of the note’s content. But, then I finished the album and felt suckered just enough to send a follow-up e-mail retracting my former praise. Now, I’ve had a chance to let the album soak up my conscious for the better part of a week. The conclusion?

Well, I should begin at the starting line, with the Maple Leaves EP released in February. I purchased Lekman's three EPs after I bought the full length. There’s some overlap between the other two EPs and his debut long-player, but Maple Leaves offers four exclusive songs and is the best of the three. We start with the title track, constructed with a flowery orchestral arrangement and rolling toms that give way to a sleigh bell-driven chorus. Somewhere, Scott Walker is shedding a tear. It’s a brilliantly catchy slice of airy chamber pop that—unlike many of Lekman’s other songs—takes emphasis away from his vocals by assembling a busy template to sing over. “Sky Phenomenon,” a sad-eyed piano ballad touching on the loss of a lover who’s flown off into the horizon, is a dead ringer for the somber, touching tones of The Cat’s Miaow. The delicate chord progression reminds me of Belle & Sebastian reduced to their bare minimum. Lyrically, Lekman hits a homerun, tugging on heartstrings with one-liners like, “You and I are not the same; we’re divided by the smoke of an aeroplane.” Luckily for the listener, vulnerability is never an issue with Lekman. “Black Cab” picks up the pace by combining a bright, clean, electric guitar melody with playful harpsichord to form a convincing number that wouldn’t sound out of place alongside any of the fine songs on The Magnetic Fields’ Distant Plastic Trees. And the EP closes with the aforementioned Television Personalities cover. All in all, Maple Leaves is quite a pleasant debut, worthy of the Swedes’ fifth Gold medal of 2004.

The tour of EPs picks back up with Rocky Dennis, released just two months after Maple Leaves. Lekman finds his sea legs on this release, searching to broaden his sound with the opener, “Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song to the Blind Girl.” Stuttering bells and lazy oboe provide the ambience for a simple electronic beat. Lekman pilfers Saint Etienne on this particular track and cranks up the melancholy for dramatic effect. It’s the kind of pretty song that Lekman seems capable of writing in his sleep, but ultimately the song’s lyrics cross that thin line between sentimental and sappy. A slightly creepy Movietone-ish segue gives way to a pair of piano ballads: “Jens Lekman’s Farewell Song to Rocky Dennis” and “If You Ever Need a Stranger”. The later I’ll discuss in a bit, as it also appears on the full-length. The former features Lekman singing about Rocky Dennis, apparently a dearly-departed friend of the protagonist. Set to a tender drum beat, Lekman’s ballad again calls attention to his clever lyrics: “I wish I had a proper reason to cry—a reason not so abstract, more like a broken clause in a contract.” But reading his lyrics is one thing; hearing Lekman sing them is another. His imaginative phrasing is unique to but a handful of the best pop singers. And that’s partially why even when Lekman’s sonic warehouse is a bit low on inventory, his voice can often carry the listener’s attention and provide the needed hook. All in all, Rocky Dennis settles for the bronze.

By Lekman’s standards, his third EP came after a lengthy hiatus: four months. Released in August, You Are the Light features Lekman at his most bombastic. The title track—also one of the standouts on his subsequent full-length—bowls over the listener with a blaring cheesy horn intro that's more Herb Alpert than Memphis Horns before giving way to a tongue-in-cheek mid-tempo love song. The over-the-top effect of blending strings, horns, and a backing female chorus into a hodgepodge of white soul showcases Lekman’s darling sense of humor and provides his most memorable single to date. “I Saw Her in the Anti-War Demonstration,” a classic-sounding jangle pop number, finds Lekman rubbing shoulders with Belle & Sebastian. But, Lekman quickly shifts gears yet again by reintroducing a lone trumpet as the lead melody in “A Sweet Summernight on Hammer Hill”. A loosely constructed, sitting-on-the-stoop R&B tune, “Summernight” finds Lekman giving a wink and a nod to Jonathan Richman, as he is often apt to do. According to the liner notes, the song features a sample of a live performance (“bootleg” as he calls it—ha!) in providing a variety of backing voices. It’s a brilliant—and odd—decision that works wonderfully. It’s Lekman’s occasionally nonsensical choices—a whistle here, a reference to Mark E. Smith there—that add to his unpredictable charm. You Are the Light finishes with the silver…

(Note: Secretly Canadian is marketing these EPs at a ridiculously cheap price. I got all three through Parasol for around $10.)


"When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog".

Now, for the full-length, When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog, released in pre-9/11 September. Over the course of it’s 11 songs, …I Wanted to Be Your Dog collects songs recorded over the last four years. (If you’re dating Lekman, this puts him at 18 or 19 for some of these recordings.) As I said earlier, the beginning of this album floored me. Lekman kicks things off with “Tram #7 to Heaven,” a gentle lo-fi gem that recalls the best of Sarah Records. The imagery, like the music, is a silly kind of serene that finds the singer in a loopy state of mind that can only be brought on by true love: “I’m driving in my daddy’s car. Life is aching in my heart. If we someday have to part, where do I go when you take Tram #7 to heaven?” And that playfulness carries over to the next song as well. “Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa” is just that—a pseudo-calypso song written for Lisa’s special day. The song’s absurdity—Lisa is warned to watch out for the Jehovah’s Witness that are soon to knock on her door—is its redeeming quality.

Lekman shifts from heart-on-the-sleeve to stake-in-his-heart with such ease that’s it’s impossible to ignore his strong similarities to Stephin Merritt. Case in point: “Do You Remember the Riots?”. Essentially an a cappella tune, “Riots” is a snapshot of a couple breaking up at a riot—of all places. “Your hand slipped out of mine. I couldn’t see no love in your eye. I knew what I had to do—burn the avenue. I’m not a political fighter. And I don’t even have a cigarette lighter. But I wanna see that fire.” In Lekman’s brain, love songs can take on the oddest of imagery. And yet he’s usually accurate in identifying disparate images that work well at illustrating his misery. “If You Ever Need a Stranger (to Sing at Your Wedding)”—which appeared on the Rocky Dennis EP in an altered state—is a fabulous bare-bones piano ballad of the Harry Nilsson variety. It’s difficult not to quote a lyric from every Lekman song. His offhand wit is remarkable. Let’s just say that Lekman’s take on the wedding singer puts Adam Sandler’s brashness to shame. Lekman has spiked the punch bowl with his slit wrist.

Sadly, the second half of When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog doesn’t quite live up to the high standard set by side one. “Silvia” is a pleasant bore that’s ripped right out of the Jonathan Richman songwriting textbook. “The Cold Swedish Winter” sounds too close to Lekman’s Norwegian neighbors, Kings of Convenience. And “Julie," while both inspired and memorable, truly sounds like Lekman stumbled upon a Magnetic Fields demo that has yet to see the light of day. By the time we hit song ten, for which the album is named, Lekman has lost his tight grasp on near-perfection and is clutching at air. Then, as if to remind us to hit “repeat” before the disc ends, Lekman delivers the successful closing punch, “A Higher Power”. Welding blurry string arrangements together, he delivers yet another tale of young love—except this one ends on a promising note. Possibly singing of Sara, the girl lucky (or if history proves true, unlucky) enough to have an album dedicated to her, Lekman sings: “She said let’s put a plastic bag over our heads and then kiss and stuff until we get dizzy and fall on the bed.” By song and record’s end, Lekman has made up his mind that there must be a higher power.

Even though …I Wanted to Be Your Dog reached the Top 10 in its native Sweden, I’ll be surprised if this record even breaks the Top 10 of the CMJ charts. American history hasn’t always been kind to foreign singer-songwriters, especially those of the indie pop variety. Which is a shame, because while Jens Lekman’s debut is not without some minor weaknesses, it is proof that he’s capable of delivering an album’s worth of undeniable indie pop goodness. He’s someone to get excited about…and that’s a precious commodity.

For more info on Jens Lekman see.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22 at 10:23 PM.

2 Comments:

Thanks. I'll check 'em out. Do they have any distribution in the U.S. that you know of? (Obviously, I can't read a word of their site...)

By  thenoiseboy, at 2:13 PM  

Looks like I can get an EP (and soon, a full length) as an import through Labrador...? I totally dig one of the songs on their site, so I'm gonna look into it.

By  thenoiseboy, at 2:24 PM  

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