Jens Lekman I Know What Love Isn't. More examples of Scandinavian subset of the male on the way. Jens is old news. In fact by recent photographic evidence he appears to have transformed from Scorpio Murtlock into Kenneth Widmerpool. If only Anthony Powell had been a visual artist as well. I always have held Jens as esteemed because of his earnestness, his dreadful joke lyrics and the fact that in his lack of fear of presenting life as a technicolor adventure of woe and baleful existence he endears as a bargain priced Barry Manilow. First track was a tender piano introduction and now straight into the soft rock of Erica America, the croon, in tact, the music gentle and peaceable and the testosterone extinguished. It's a halting introduction, minimized from the widescreen pop of the last record. Is he living still in Australia? Was he imprisoned in such a desolate region by the tortures of love and the tyranny of the heart? I can't imagine Australia wrapping a loving embrace around his ephemeral frame. The life he paints is mainly pitiable. Is the life of a rock star so difficult? He's been feted for certain, even in the most pecunious indie locales. But perhaps it is that the life of a rock star is not that interesting. See Allo Darlin'. Their second record isn't a patch on the first and seemingly all that has changed is that she is beloved the world around. Perhaps there is an adjustment period when people transform their reactions from that of a friend to an admirer from afar. Distant even when a few inches away in the same room of a cold house. Turning this new form isolation into an artful discourse is perhaps more difficult than a delicate outpouring of love for your friends that supported you always when you had only a ukulele, a heart and flat footwear. Jens was always to handsome for his melancholy. Third track. Still with the restraint. A rolling piano melody, pocket sized strings, his gentle voice reflecting somber meditations rather than an epic calling forth. Perhaps he is in Sweden, perhaps this was recorded in the heart of Summer and the sunshine that is escaping from the grooves on my mp3 player is a coming to terms. He's beautiful. He's immensely talented. We will grant him absolution for his inadequacies always because of this. I wrote of Cats on Fire previously and their arc is different. They were minor figures and slowly they've accumulated a comfort level with the world's turning away from indifference. Mattias from Cats on Fire seems more firmly ensconced in his principles and integrity and mores whereas Jens is the fragile soul who will sing always for hi supper, the next track as desperate as the last for fear of love slipping through his fingers like sand. Cliche, my apologies. They are mainly non-existent here. Earlier today I was listening to Cocoanut Groove and his grasp of he cliche is tenuous at best, at least in his adopted language, but Jens shorn of his ill-timed joke lyrics sounds effortless in his pathos. Here a sampled kitchen sink drip, a piano loop, strangely acidic strings and saxophone renderings in the background. My mother would approve, surely. The last title was so lovely, She Just Don't Want to Be With You No More. Are all love songs generally written from fear? The genuine love songs, the earnest love songs, those written from the despair of waking to a dawn alone. I have half of a lifetime filled with emptiness and now I have discovered my heart's complement and I am afraid. I write about it only tenderly, too timid to caress it fully for fear of spoilage or exposure. This is a bedroom record. His first. I can imagine him sitting shyly with lights raised only slightly, his guitar on the stand in the corner and hands outreached trying to comprehend the retchings of the human experience. Love is a potent word. Sue Johnson has said as much. I am a devotee, truly. The heart leads. There was an evening, recently, spent with laps filled and arms entwined and the words came quickly and poetic and I felt proud that I was able to express all of my heart's emanations without hesitation or stammering or yammering and I meant every word. Hyperbole has been deleted. I am no longer capable. And so these past few entries have expressed mundanity while my fingers dance lithely and my soul warms it is only that the tendrils across her face have me overcome. There is an Andromeda heights tender docility, a boyish grace, more synthesized saxophones and digital whistles and flutes and fragile accompaniment on the chorus. It's utterly lovely, you will despise, I am sure. Because Jens Lekman exists outside of this world, writ boldly in skywriting letters a thousand hands high, and now there is Jens Lekman. He was always there, but there was always this cloak of panache, this edifice of dashing elan, and the beauty that caused the gentle soul to succumb. I Want a Pair of Cowboy Boots. Is he a fan of the Pearlfishers? This nostalgic recollection of life as a recreation of all of the travails of children magnified, with larger handprints left on handrails reached for after recurring stumbles. Calypso Jens has arrived on The World Moves On. While listening and while writing I have sneaked a peek at the trailer for Cloud Atlas. I once read that Cloud Atlas is the novel that Kate Bush would write should she ever put pen to paper. I disagree. The trailer looks lovely, if you are able to remove from your memory all images of Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. In my ideal world actors would retire from the screen after their debut performances. There is no shortage. We could employ the fresh faces that would better match the composite of humanity I created in my mind. Luisa Rey is not Catwoman. Bargain basement calypso, the vocals carry the cheer, the cheesy horns like a fitful rainstorm in Denver in August. This summer has been cheerless. The fires, the heat, the lunacy of murder spread across the landscape and dictates the tenor of a macabre aura infecting everything that is still and the living move tentatively through the underbrush. Jens is more necessary than ever. And Cloud Atlas. It isn't as brilliant as you hoped it would be. The writing never matches the conceit. Does it? I do not think. A film version is an audacious idea, but again, Catwoman. Argh. Is Jens now lamenting Fredrik Reinfeldt? Recently divorced Fredrik. Wants to retire at 75 Fredrik? Possibly, the title of this track is The End of the World is Bigger then Love. How very unlike Jens is that title. Love is everything, he's wrong, the world could end tomorrow and I would not be unhappy with the world, we would continue in the aether as spirals of dna remnants floating out among the flora of the cosmos destined to forever recombine and become enjoined and live happily ever after. If only Fredrik was so all powerful, then the Radio Dept might actually write an interesting political song in response, up until this point he's an enervating presence on the state of Swedish pop. Title track now, a jolly rollicking strum, innocent queries unto the nature of romance. I can answer him, I know the answer, I know what love is. "Let's get married, I'm serious...". I will choose to ignore the next line. I am in love with this album and I have been in possession of its endless charms for only a few moments. The chorus so sincere and sympathetic, he's written an album that could be mistaken for resignation but I think it's a third party transcription of life as a pop star that was once destined for greater things but somehow set agee by the fact that world has not yet been destroyed and so it is populated with people whose greatest virtue is their incurious nature and their conservative approach to living. I was one of them, I have broken free, I am high above the clouds and the last track echoes softly back to earth and if only ears were more precise and if only hearts were more resilient this hug would fell the specter of disappointment that awaits almost all of us. But we're the lucky ones, we've discovered the undiscoverable, we're happy and Jens and his genteel songs are our lovely companions.