Send "Jens Lekman " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Of all the loveable things about Jens Lekman, my favorite is how he tosses banana peels on the paths of conventional taste. Seldom does such wonderful music sound so comically awful when you try to describe it to someone. "Man, he's amazing, like Neil Sedaka with a bit of a head cold singing over the Love Boat theme song." By the time you get that far, dude is already backing away slowly. A Swedish indie-pop dramatist who introduces sarcastic modernity to the most gloriously moribund styles of the 20th century-- from orientalist world music to suburban exotica-- Lekman guides an enthusiastic tour through the dustiest yard-sale record collections, conjuring obscure shades of Henry Mancini, Harry Belafonte, and Bobby McFerrin. Smooth saxes and indigenous flutes jostle against some of the most quotable one-liners this side of Das Racist. Listening to him gives me strange urges, like downloading the latter-day Beach Boys discography.With such an approach, it would be easy to slip into actual decadence or mere parody. Lekman, a slippery character, avoids both because of his rich, alloyed personality, which can sop up any amount of pink champagne. He whisks us out of the authenticity-obsessed house that punk built into provinces where music more openly embraces the attributes of the actor, taking a stance of ebullient knowingness toward the abundant variety and complex artifice on the fringes of pop. He's very clever with frames, using vocal inflections and contextual cues to pack whole ways of life into deceptively simple lines. On his previous full-length record, 2007's Night Falls Over Kortedala, he sang, "I was slicing up an avocado/ When you came up behind me." Not much on paper, but when activated by Lekman's exaggeratedly tony diction and cozy music, it captured the texture of a contemporary bourgeois existence in one gnomic stroke. The Lucksmiths were great at this same kind of evocative shorthand, though Lekman brings to it a slightly more jaundiced eye....full text |
| Prettymuchamazing |
| Do I have enough coins for a cab fare down Elizabeth Street? Where can I find Kirsten Dunst? Is any of this madness really happening? Welcome to the waggish web that Jens Lekman has woven on his short and sweet An Argument With Myself EP. “I hate facts. All the facts. We know everything about something. I think it’s much more interesting if there’s a million different stories that completely contradict each other.” This is what he told a Portuguese music blog last year after one of his signature solo performances. To listen to his music is to be exactly where he was, in that moment, in that peculiar collision of space and time. This is what makes his seemingly ephemeral sonic snapshots stand the test of time — and after taking a glimpse into his fantasy world, you may never want to leave. Each track is not just an abstraction, but situated in a very real topography, so much so thatLekman’s Smalltalk blog has a Google Maps screenshot that frames each one. “An Argument With Myself” is akin to his previous work, except with a much faster reggae tempo that gently propels the frenzy that’s racing through his mind. This groovy number pauses during the bridge so he can internally debate “Oh yes, can we just try and talk about this?/Can we just try and figure this out?/No, I don’t wanna talk to you (changes tone)/Okay, you want to keep on fighting…Yeah I wanna keep on fighting/Fair enough…1,2,3/” and then we’re back to the carefully constructed beat narrated by his David Byrne whimsy. The groove keeps marching along on the bass heavy “A Promise”. The arpeggiated melody is something right out of an early Culture Club album; without all the noise and some superbly synthed-up violin and well timed keys. It’s very likely you will need some of the blood red wine “from the wine regions outside of Santiago, Chile” to get this delightful diddy out of your head — so innocent, so infectious....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| It’s understandable that lots of folks like to draw parallels between the music of Jens Lekman and, say, Morrissey or Belle & Sebastian. Why? Because there are a whole lot of similarities there, to be sure. But more than either of those two indie mainstays, the artist that Lekman most reminds this writer of is Steely Dan. This is not because Lekman’s voice is reminiscent of Donald Fagen’s, or that his arrangements evoke fern-bar coke binges in the same way that Steely Dan’s does. No, it’s because, more than anything else, Jens Lekman’s music is uncannily precise. His lyrics (florid, yet specific) and his music (expansive, yet tightly-wound) combine to make songs that unspool themselves in a way that’s rooted in a precision that makes it clinically effective, while being somewhat emotionally detached—much like the entirety of Aja. That’s not to say Lekman doesn’t know how to have fun; in fact, this EP’s opening track comes off like a seriously goofy flight of lyrical fancy. But while the title track has a from-the-hip vibe—”fuck you, no you fuck you”—Lekman’s dense construction of words and sounds begs for closer inspection; he’s telling a story and he really wants you to pay attention. And, for the most part, An Argument With Myself is definitely worthy of a closer look. Although it only clocks in at 17 minutes, this five-song EP is a pleasantly jumbled affair that shows Lekman’s lyrical facility continues to improve, while his stylistic palette continues to broaden; he has moved well beyond the simple, twee clone-work of his earliest releases. Little filigrees of baroque pop decorate stiff, self-conscious funk (“New Directions”), while gently warm acoustic numbers like “Waiting for Kirsten” are rendered into slow-burning, handclap-ready tunes....full text |
Jens Lekman lyrics
