Jens Lekman’s lyrics could make the farthest-gone religious extremists put down their guns and stones and roll around in a field of daisies, releasing the tensions of their confused souls like twelve year old girls getting pap smeared by Zac Efron. Jens Lekman’s dreamy pop melodies could make Anne Frank rise from the dead to join Hitler as grand marshal of a perfectly choreographed parade down the streets of Baghdad, peopled by dead Iraqi civilians and rich American congressmen. Aside from the aforementioned healing powers of Mr. Lekman’s music, it also has the power to woo. If you’ve never fallen in love with a song, you haven’t listened to Jens Lekman. Be careful not to break your fragile kneecaps when you fall to the ground, swooning at the beauty of Lekman’s melancholy joy. I don’t want to get into hyperbole here, but you might experience a feeling of rapture when you put on a Jens Lekman album. You could even come in your pants, so it’s useful to keep a clean pair of underwear at hand when listening.

Lekman understands the glory of sentimentality. Going beyond camp, Lekman takes the trite into a place of transcendence. One of his classic hits, the Rocky Dennis EP, revisits the well-treaded ground of Peter Bogdanovich’s 1985 drama Mask, the true story of an (otherwise) normal southern Californian teenager who suffers from a severely disfiguring bone disorder. As if that weren’t bad enough, his mom is a struggling alcoholic biker played by Cher. The film itself is an undeniable tear-jerker, and a poignant, well-crafted one at that. Lekman’s suite of songs, the first one written from the perspective of the film’s unfortunate teenage hero, are just as moving as the seminal melodrama, and even more complex in their layers of emotional intrigue.

Jens’s songs are about unrequited love, nostalgia, romantic vignettes, Sweden, anarchism, first kisses and wild fantasies. He’s been compared to Morrissey, but I think that’s because Morrissey is, like, the nightmare doppelgänger of Jens Lekman. He’s more like a less apprehensive Stuart Murdoch, or Stephin Merritt without the ‘tude. And he has an amazing new album coming out in the U.S., called Night Falls Over Kortedala, where he turns all epic 70’s disco-orchestral. Check it out when it hits stores October 9th!

	Listen to “Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig” by Jens Lekman [download]
	Listen to “Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song” by Jens Lekman [download]