Thursday, January 19, 2012
Make Friends With Jens!
Jens Lekman is a charming, quirkly, and sardonic 31-year-old singer/songwriter hailing from Angered, Sweden, who has enraptured indie pop fans around the globe for nearly eight years, and who I've sorely missed since his 2007 masterpiece 'Night Falls Over Kortedala...'
Lo and behold, he's back, for the first time since I launched Song of the Week back in September 2007, with a delightful 5-song EP called 'An Argument With Myself,' whose title track is this week's offering.
'Argument,' is an infectious delight: a twangy, witty, and light-hearted uptempo travelogue of a backpacker with a hyperactive inner dialogue. Even the song's sole expletive manages to be sweet - in a three year old's cadence of 'Be quiet / No, YOU be quiet!'.. Here it is, live in Seattle.
Below, we stroll through Lekman's highly entertaining back catalogue... Who else could write the droll, languid balald 'You Put Your Arms Around Me,' in which, while he's cutting vegetables, his girlfriend gives him a surprise hug from behind, causing him to slice off his finger? Here he is on Swedish TV
'The Opposite of Hallelujah' in Cleveland with an oompah band..
'Black Cab' in Gothenburg, 2003...
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