Link: Jens Lekman — and a tip: there are several free mp3 files for your listening pleasure.
The Inside Pulse:
I’d name drop the influences, but for several selfish and one good reason I won’t. For starters, I don’t want other acts to go out and try the combination because it just won’t work. Also, I want the indie fans to get to the bottom of the review, and if I start listing names they’ll be off sprinting to their preferred source of new music. Besides, a trip to allmusic.com will do that for you, so why bother. The one good reason is that the success of this disc has nothing to do with who Jens Lekman listens to or leans on. This album succeeds because of its humanity.
The premise of indie music is that by serving smaller audiences, acts and labels can make a more significant impact on the listeners that care. Too often though, it’s a matter of influences by numbers, leaving something cold in the center. The influences and references are clear on this album, but also clearly just a path to the ground-level truth. Jens Lekman makes emotionally rich pictures from real-life settings like Morrissey or Jonathan Richman (there go half the indie kids) while hopping from early sixties dream folk to dirge to garage pop to nineties indie rock with ease. The medium is not the message. This album calls the indie rock bluff (without being a referendum on indie rock) and forms a connection from the Swedish crooner to folks around the world. There is no prerequisites in indie 101 — just a pre-disposition to smart, honest pop music.
Positives:
“Someday I’ll be stuffed in a museum, scaring little kids, with the inscripture ‘Carpe Diem’ — something I never did” — and 100 lines just as good.
The Swedes know that coals give off more heat after the fire is out. Don’t be fooled by the cool-looking surfaces.
Jens shows no fear in appropriating anything, including — now famously in some circles — a Beat Happening clip that will shake the knees of anyone that will love this disk. “Pocketful of Money” is the track you should try if you’re on the fence.
Negatives: (A.K.A.: Why this isn’t the answer to war, cancer or hangnails)
Too many people will be begging the world to buy this album but it’s not for everyone, and I don’t mean that in a disdainful way. It simply speaks to its own audience without trying to loop in the whole world.
As a collection of previous releases, this album collects songs that are years old and some of it already sounds a bit dated.
Some of the goofy lines are too far afield — “I would not be accepted because I can’t dance the funky chicken” might be some people’s favorite line in context, but I doubt the rock and roll hall of fame is asking for the original lyric sheet.
Cross-breed:
Jonathan Richman, Morrissey, Magnetic Fields, Beck, Todd Rundgren and ABBA (almost kidding about that last one)
Reason to buy:
You use the word “pop” to define a musical genre, you want to say you were there before this ended up on every year-end top ten list (it’s already on a few taste-maker lists), or you like any of the references listed above.
