Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent Jens
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Artist: Jens LekmanEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2005-11-22
Music Label: Secretly Canadian
Soundtracks:
- At the Dept. of Forgotten Songs
- Maple Leaves [EP Version]
- Sky Phenomenon
- Pocketful of Money
- Black Cab
- Someone to Share My Life With
- Rocky Dennis' Farewell Song
- Rocky Dennis in Heaven
- Jens Lekman's Farewell Song to Rocky Dennis
- Julie [Remix]
- I Saw Her in the Anti-War Demonstration
- A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill
- A Man Walks into a Bar
- Another Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill
- F-Word
- The Wrong Hands
- Maple Leaves [7" Version]
Music reviews of Oh You're So Silent Jens
Music Review: Spilled a Beer All over the Atmosphere
Rating: 5 Stars
I think the other reviewers on here have done justice to this album. But I like this record so much, I felt compelled to pay it tribute. It is a phenomenal collection of heartfelt and delicately witty songs from Swedish singer/songwriter Jens Lekman--a compilation of his work over the last few years. He has said he doesn't intend to record another album ever again, which will pretty much make him the Arthur Rimbaud of chamber pop, so it's best to savour what there is of this somewhat demure, elusively charming song-poet.
As for the production of the album itself, well let's see...pretend you head off to London for a much-needed break and you go record shopping (your first planned activity, of course) at some used record shop, and you're rifling through crates of old vinyl and you stumble upon some 7" by the Left Banke that has literally been gathering dust since 1971, and you go to your friend's apartment in Notting Hill, and she has pink hair and makes her own jewelry and has a turntable naturally, and you play the thing and it just makes you ache with all its scratchy loveliness and you hold the thing to your chest and swear no one has heard any of this before you, and no one deserves to again. That's kinda close.
Lekman channels the almost-apologetic fragility of Nick Drake in his soft vocals and has clearly studied up on the Stephin Merritt catalogue and written copious notes on the Life and Times of Morrissey. His lyrics are wry and pained and whimsical, touched by shades of anguish and despair that are neither frustrating nor suffocating to the listener. But there's no band that he resembles more in sound and tuneful song structure than Belle & Sebastian (who even get sampled, briefly, on the fantastic "Black Cab")--it's the late-60's afterglow, the unassuming piano, acoustic guitar, and humming strings, and sense of drunken romance and abandon. In fact, there are samples and odd intrusions all through this record (ever heard of the Avalanches? and how bout the crowd of young fans sshhhing each other while cackling) that haven't added as much to an album in the weirdest ways since the Pixies went to the studio to do Surfer Rosa.
Indeed, Lekman is so accomplished as a songwriter that he even makes self-obsession attractive. I mean, you can't self-scoldingly put your own name in an album title and expect to be taken seriously, right? But Lekman's songs are simply too affecting, and he is too busy making hilarious from-out-of-nowhere song statements such as "I met her in the anti-war demonstration" (great song) and " I know why Mona Lisa smiled" or "I knew a girl who looked sort of a like a guy" to really get in his own way.
Even the likes of Morrissey and David Thomas Broughton are too mopey to write a song like "Black Cab", a luscious little interlude depicting, simply enough, the experience of being at a party with a bunch of friends that makes you feel lonelier than being alone, and the means by which to escape. "Sky Phenomenon", "Pocketful of Money" and BOTH versions of the magnificent "Maple Leaves" are some of the best indie twee tracks I have heard since Jeff Mangum first picked up his guitar to go even rockier and harder than Lekman could drum up in his ornate Faberge Egg worldview.
Lekman has good taste. He is talented, focussed, and simple. His songs are all melodic, magical, and deeply affecting. Some have criticized the middle part of the album which takes a sudden conceptual turn into a tribute session for Rocky Dennis, but I found those songs touching and off-kilter and I would have missed them had they been discarded.
Jens Lekman longs for a sweeter universe and for some love in his life. Some silly girl tells him it's all "make believe" but he thought she said "maple leaves". Oh, the tragic beauty of miscommunication, and the swooning loneliness of the poet. I'll take Lekman's cue, though, and be simple. This was the best CD I discovered in 2005.
But Lekman thought I said "to some this is as sharp as knives"--and in a way he'd be right.
Description of Oh You're So Silent Jens
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