A Song a Week From Jens Lekman, With Love

Jens Lekman writes the kind of music that deals, almost exclusively, in pleasantries. Take “And I Remember Every Kiss,” the opening song on his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala:“There will be no kisses tonight / there will be no holding hands tonight.” Lekman’s simple words are wrapped up in such lush string arrangements or shimmery disco beats that you don’t pay them much mind. If you do listen closely, though, what you may find is that the 33-year-old Swede’s light and airy tunes offer little voyeuristic peeks into his life and mind, like reading notes he’s passed to close friends. And they’re cute, not creepy.

Which is why we’re excited for the latest (and probably most ambitious) project Lekman has embarked on yet —one new song drawn from real-life inspiration per week for all of 2015.

“Think of these little songs as postcards,” he writes on his website. “Little greetings from me to you.” That’s 52 “little greetings” from Jens Lekman by the end of this year. There are five so far, and if the rest of them are as good as the first batch, that’s 52 characteristically lovely new Jens Lekman songs to look forward to.

The first song is a bit meta, with lyrics that resonate with self-awareness about the whole project. “When you listen to this, it’s 2015,” he sings in his charming lilt. “Even if you listen to this in 2016 / this song is a time machine / a bookmark in time / a breadcrumb / a chance to undo what you want undone / a chance to start over before it’s even begun.”

So far, so good. Lekman is in his element, writing conversationally about day-to-day occurrences and turning them into pleasant little ditties to bop your head to. One entry, from January 15, was particularly special: a song he wrote for two Australian fans, Erin and Alisdair, who asked Lekman to play their wedding in the north of Sweden.

“I’d never met them before but Alisdair wrote and asked if I wanted to sing for them and he seemed sweet so I said yes,” Lekman writes on his site. “And since I was going to sing for them and had to write a song this week I figured why not make the song for them.”

Besides the occasional matrimonial ceremony, where will Lekman’s musical journey take him? Well, if the song posted on February 1st is any indication, it may just be on a quite literal journey:

“When I started playing music /I had this dream in my head / of driving down a country road / with my guitar and a moped,” he sings, in the fifth installment of his weekly song series. “Stopping in a town / play someone’s house and a local library / but you know that’s not how a tour works / someone explained to me. /I’m dreaming of a little tour, playing all those places /that I’ve never played before.”

“Those places” that Lekman has yet to visit will make up the stops on his month-long living room tour of Sweden in May, and suggestions are currently being accepted via e-mail. So if you happen to be in Sweden, shoot an e-mail over to dinstad@jenslekman.com and you could just be the subject of one of Lekman’s “little greetings.”