And then one day, you discover the movies by Aleksandr Petrov.

A Christmas Skype conversation between me age 17 and me age 30

30 - Hello, hello, can you hear me ?
17 - Yes, but there's an echo.
30 - Uuuuh I hate Skype.
17 - Don't worry, it's not too bad.
30 - This is why long distance relationships don't work. Because you're turned into a stuttering fourth grader.
17 - I don't know much about long distance relationships.
30 - You say something funny and then you have to wait those humiliating two seconds before you get a response.
17 - Aha.
30 - You will know all about it in a few years.
17 - Ok.
30 - Anyway, I just wanted to say hi and merry christmas.
17 - Merry christmas.
30 - It's nice to see you.
17 - You too.
30 - Love your hair.
17 - Really ?
30 - Yes.
17 - So what's up?
30 - I'm just finishing the songs for my new album. Next month I will be doing the final recordings and then it should be done.
17 - How exciting, what's it about?
30 - You know, it's about that time after you've come out of a relationship and you come to terms with what has happened and how you deal with it.
17 - Aha.
30 - One day you're ok and the next you're not and you long for that time when you will feel whole again. You're looking for closure and then you realize that there is no such thing. You don't get over a broken heart, you just learn to carry it as gracefully as you can.
17 - It sounds boring and middle aged.
30 - It probably is but hey, I'm not seventeen anymore.
17 - So it's an album for the brokenhearted?
30 - Yes, but also for the heartbreaker. It doesn't take sides. It's for the ones who wish they were somewhere else, with someone else. And for the ones who wake up choking under the sheets of a relationships.
17 - Yes.
30 - I was worried for a while, that the songs were too self centered, that only I would be able to understand them. As if I was singing my diary, or having a dialogue with myself.
17 - You mean a monologue?
30 - I mean like what we're doing right now.
17 - Uhm yes.
30 - But I feel now, after having lived with these songs for a while and playing some of them live, they seem to be doing their job.
17 - Yes.
30 - Well, I'm not gonna keep you long. Just wanted to wish you a merry christmas.
17 - It was nice to hear from you.
30 - Oh, one more thing. About all those times when I told you you were worthless and wouldn't amount to anything. I was wrong, I'm sorry about that.
17 - I know. It's ok.
30 - No it's not ok. Look, I'm still doing it. Bossing you around. Talking to you like you don't know anything.
17 - Yeah but...
30 - No, I'm a total dick and you should say something. Speak up for yourself, to yourself.
17 - Jerk.
30 - That's more like it.

I constantly have to explain this. Smalltalk is not a blog. People are suggesting I'd turn it into a tumblr or blogr or whatever it's called or at least insert links to each entry. But no my dear friends, that's not what I'm doing here. Smalltalk is meant to be one long scroll. Like the Bayeux Tapestry.

Sometimes my friend Stefan Sporsen calls me up and asks if I would like to sing with him. If my schedule is free I always say yes. You don't say no to Stefan Sporsen. He's the sweetest man in Sweden. This time he asked me about Musikhjalpen at Stora Teatern this upcoming thursday, with his band Augustifamiljen. I flipped the pages in my calendar and found an empty page that needed to be filled. So yes, I'll see you there my Gothenburgian friends. I'll be singing two songs. And the very lovely Anna Jarvinen, Anna Ternheim and Maria Andersson will sing too as well as the always charming Jose Gonzalez, Jonathan Johansson and Moto Boy. And it's for charity!

Sometimes my friend Magnus Carlson calls me up and asks if I would like to sing with him. If my schedule is free I always say yes. You don't say no to Magnus Carlson. He's the sweetest man in Sweden. This time he asked me about New Years Eve in Stockholm, with his band the Moon Ray Quintet. I flipped the pages in my calendar and found an empty page that needed to be filled. So yes, I'll see you there my Stockholmian friends. I'll be singing some of my own songs too. And the very lovely Britta Persson will sing too as well as the always charming Ebbot Lundberg.

Coming back from tour is like coming out of prison. A very fun and colourful prison but still a prison. Readjusting to society takes a while, I keep waiting for a vehicle that I can start loading stuff into, or the echo of a snare drum lingering in the backrooms and corridors of a smoky theatre.

It was a great tour, we had a lot of fun me and Addison. Thanks so much to all of you who came out. I decided this tour was going to be just me and a drummer because I wanted to strip down the songs to their bare minimum. As a friend said, with a band it's more of a cabaret, or a movie, that the crowd gets to sit back and watch. But with a duo setting it's like a direct communication. I like it both but for different reasons.

A lot of you who I met on this tour were asking about the band I had back in 2006, the all female band dressed in white. I liked that band a lot but they are not coming back, most of them have careers now far in excess of what I could offer them. Like one of them is a rocket scientist, she works at a SPACE STATION. How am I going to compete with that? I constantly have to put together new bands, it's the story of my life. But it's a story I can live with.

There's a smalltown in Montana we always drive by on US tours, it's called Jens. I imagine all the people there look like me, maybe talk like me. Jens clones. They are probably the people who run all my Facebook profiles. One day I'm going to ride into town on a donkey and take my place as the king of Jens, maybe form a band with my clones, provided that the donkey doesn't get stuck in the snow on the way.

Topic for the month of December: Clones

Also, regarding that Steven Millhauser story that I mentioned, there's another story in the same book that I like. If you've ever watched an episode of Tom & Jerry and thought "poor guys, why can't they realize that without each other they are nothing"

Regarding the obsession with details in songwriting that I talked about in comparison to microminiatures earlier: I found a poem by Jane Hirshfield that really put its finger on it. It's about a person walking through the woods, picking up a branch and moving it to the other side of the trail. The person says "There, that's done now". The poem is called "Changing Everything".

If you're in Gšteborg you should join this torchlight procession and march against xenophobia. It goes from Gštaplatsen to Gustav Adolfs Torg, this wednesday the 9th. I will be singing a few songs at the end.

Yes, that's Goofy, standing on the eye of a needle. He was sculpted by artist Hagop Sandaldjian who kept it for himself until he died. I wanted to go see the exhibition of his work at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA, but it was closed.

I've been thinking a lot about microminiatures lately, because they remind me of the work I do sometimes. They remind me of the tiny details in my songs that I work on forever that no one ever hears. A song is often written fast, but it is in it's tiny details that I spend my days and nights. That's the cities where I live, that's where I walk the streets and memorize every corner.

Sometimes these details are a curse, sometimes they are a question. And the question is : Who am I doing it for?

There's a short story by Steven Millhauser that I love called "In the Reign of Harad IV" about a miniature artist. I think you should read it. If you want to.

Currently I am on the road and I won't have time to reply to e-mails. But I made a little FAQ for the most common questions:

Q: Can you get me into the show somehow, maybe you have a guestlist I could be on?
A: No, I couldn't even get my mum into the show if I wanted to.

Q: It's my friends birthday the day of your show, can you do a shout-out / sing happy birthday etc etc?
A: That's really sweet, I wish I had friends like you. But I get this question maybe 20 times per day, so I'll have to say no to all to be fair. Instead, take your friend out to the show, have an excellent time and then make pancakes in the morning.

Q: What is this topic of the month thing?
A: The topic of the month is the compulsory main subject of your e-mail when you write to me. If you wanna talk about something else you will have to make associations, find reference points. This is mainly because I see our communication as an exchange, not a service, so there needs to be some groundrules to keep it consistent and creative.

Q: What is the topic for October?
A: The topic for the month of October is "Highways"

Addison in the picture here is my new drummer. It's the two of us who will be touring the American and European continents the next couple of weeks. We've been rehearsing next to this little cemetery, nice in the daytime, terrifying at night. With the howling coyotes in the distance.

Tonight we're playing a little warm-up show at Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana. I hope you guys were signed up to the newsletter, if not - see this is the kind of stuff you're missing out on. It's a tiny space so show up early if you want to be sure of getting in.

Also, there are two in-store shows happening for this tour. Seattle - at Easy Street Queen Ann, 2pm and Chicago - at Reckless, also at 2pm. So if you missed out on tickets for those shows you can at least get some nice afternoon tunes for free.

Time for tea. More soon.
J

Bloomington, Indiana.

I'll be picking tunes on swedish radio P3 Musikguiden Sept 26th - 29th, on a couple of different themes including australian favourites, heartbreak songs, songs I've found in the 1 kronor bin at the fleamarket and songwriters who can tell a story with a sense of humour. Find it streaming somewhere here.

El Perro Del Mar - What Do You Expect?

The Secretly Canadian headquarters would like to inform you about where the EP is streaming, where you can win vinyl and where you can pre-order. Turn your paraboles over here

02. Waiting For Kirsten

03. A Promise

04. New Directions

05. So This Guy At My Office

(which is very fitting considering that they've raised the price so much that a lot of people now can't afford public transport)

Today on our porch, a mouse head. Not even a whole head, just the mouth and nose. Chopped off.
It's the mouse mafia.
The swedish mouse mafia.
A bunch of ordinary mice who simply got fed up with what society had to offer them and decided to run business their way. A little bit of import. A little bit of export. Unfortunately, this little fella was caught ratting out, whispering in the wrong ear. Now he won't be whispering much more. Let this serve as a warning.

I picked up Belle & Sebastians green album yesterday for the first time in a long time, and heard Stevie Jackson sing "What's the worst job yooouu've had?". And I thought : now there's a topic of the month. Thanks Stevie, I was kinda struggling.

Well, Stevie, let me tell you. I think being a plumber was one of the worst jobs. The city wanted more plumbers so they created these imaginary plumbing jobs where I got to walk around with some real plumbers who'd gone to plumbing school and make coffee for them. I think there are nice plumbers but these guys hated a lot of stuff, women, immigrants and gays mostly. I told them I wanted to be an artist and they told me I didn't necessarily have to show up anymore.

The bingo parlor wasn't too bad, it was mostly just quietly depressing. The place was warm and everyone was welcome, the homeless, the lonely and the chainsmoking grannies. I called out the numbers and walked around selling tickets. Came home reeking of tobacco and sweat.

I worked at a medical center once, that was also one of those made up jobs - the county council wanted more men to work in healthcare. Mostly I was mastering the coffee machine but occasionally I got to hang out with the audiologist. It inspired me, I liked examining peoples ears. I applied for audiology school several times but never got in.

Most of the jobs were boring but they were fine once you got into the routine. A few however wore you down mentally and physically. Marketing research wasn't the worst but after working there for almost a year I started having horrible nightmares and felt constantly stressed. Your job was to call up people and discuss what brand of cornflakes they prefered, if they didn't want to (and most people didn't) you had to persuade them. You became an intruder in their home and they would treat you with their finest hostility. At the end of the phonecall you were left with a feeling of guilt and disgust. Telemarketing was the same thing but on commission - meaning you worked your ass off, dealt with the darkest of human hatred all day and didn't make any money at all. And then the body started aching from sitting in the same position by the not very ergonomic chair and desk. My neck and right arm were constantly hurting.

The disabled taxi service job saved me. It was another phone job but people would call me and not the other way around. The chairs were nice, the boss would listen to you, everyone was nice there. I miss those days. Then there were some cleaning and dishwashing jobs. It was what it was. And there you go, my curriculum vitae. Now tell me about yours.

There's been a lot of debating here in Sweden the last months about the "shitjobs". Young people being used, working themselves to death for very little or no money at all. Suggestions have been made to lower the minimum wage so that we can create more shitjobs that you can't make a living from. Karin WanngŒrd from the Social Democrats goes out to criticize the shitjobs but is instantly met with a wave of angry responses from the right: Who are you to decide what a shitjob is?

So who is to decide and what is a shitjob exactly? There seems to be some confusion. On Discovery Channel yesterday there was a show called Dirty Jobs where a man was trying different jobs that would be seen as unpleasant or dirty - cleaning sewers, collecting owl vomit, a lot of jobs that had to do with animal or human feces. These are, as the title suggests, dirty jobs. Not bad jobs, just jobs that might not be very attractive.

But when your job does damage to your body and your mind, when you can't make a living from it and you have no rights, well, I would call that a shitjob.

Here's a very good article in swedish about this.

Opening the shows in Europe is a beautiful voice. Does this voice have a name? Yes, the voice is called Lia Ices. Does this Lia have some music I can listen to? Yes, here's a song called Daphne for example. Should I show up early to see her? Yes, you should.

This time of year is the saddest time of year. It is the end of the summer, the time when your boyfriend or girlfriend is moving to Berlin or New York or London and says "I just don't want the responsibility that comes with a relationship, I really need to be free right now".

And you hate the future, you want to throw rocks and empty beercans at it. You hate the changes it brings. You're late for uni, your first class of the semester, and you wish you hadn't cut your own hair two days before you started. And you think of the days getting darker and on your way home you kick the gold out of the leaves on the ground. You ride the buses and trams and trains in circles. You put chewing gums on elevator buttons.

At night you can't sleep so you go out and it's a starlit night so you sit and watch the constellations up there, and then a meteor divides the sky in two and you think of one thing to wish for but there are so many things.

I am reading your emails and I may not have time to reply to all of them, but I just wan't you to know that I've been there too. I'm there with you right now.

Let's do the Gothenburg show at Nefertiti.

Let's do a show in Bristol too.

And let's change the venue in Copenhagen to Koncerthuset, Studio 2 since Jazzhouse got flooded.

Let's do a show in Vienna. Let's do it at the Odeon Theater on the 26th of October.

Let's also do a show in Göteborg and add a third show in New York, dates coming up.

Let's announce all this through the newsletter before the tickets are released.

I used to have a webshop a few years ago. I started it because my sister needed a part time job, she was working at Burger King at the time and it seemed like a shitjob. I mean we all need those crappy jobs to teach us that life is hard and you gotta work to get somewhere but I came in late one day and saw her flipping burgers and the big brother in me just felt like it was time to do something. It was a fine webshop but when my sis started school we had to abandon it. A few days ago the guys from the recordlabel brought it back from the grave, they made it better, updated the stock and they're shipping a lot faster than me and my sis ever did. Check it out.

voilā!

Opening the shows in America will be Geoff O'Connor, lead singer from The Crayon Fields / Sly Hats / currently doing his thing solo. I would've loved to tell you more about Geoff since he's a friend but I think he did it best himself in this Rose Quartz interview. Especially in the last question.

And they said "let there be picture disc". And picture disc there was. Pre-order here.

An Argument With Myself

In the case "Jens Lekman vs. Jens Lekman", we will look closer at the evidence presented - the photo I had carried in my breastpocket for a whole year, the pressed honeysuckle, the wind so rich on summer and so sweet - how are these things connected and why are they relevant?

Picking a fight with Europe

14 oct 2011 Nijmegen, NL - The Vereniging
15 oct 2011 Düsseldorf, DE - Schumannsaal Düsseldorf
17 oct 2011 London, UK - Heaven
19 oct 2011 Manchester, UK - Band on the Wall
22 oct 2011 Stockholm, SE - Södra Teatern
24 oct 2011 Köpenhamn. DK - Jazzhouse
27 oct 2011 Milano, IT - Salumeria della Musica
29 oct 2011 Paris, FR - Grande Halle de la Villette (Pitchfork Music Festival)

For questions about tickets etc, please contact the venues / ticket agent / shady guy on the street. I have no more info than you do I'm afraid.

Picking a fight with Itunes.

I was in a video store in Melbourne last year, looking for something to eat my popcorn to, when I stumbled across the shelf called "Foreign". In this shelf were all kinds of genres - comedy, drama, thriller, you name it. Mostly good stuff too. Only common denominator was that the movies were from a non english speaking country. I decided that since my music is all comedy, drama, thriller, you name it, mostly good stuff too AND from a non english speaking country, my music should be filed under "Foreign".

But Itunes have their preconceived conception of what music is and should be. I am only allowed to choose between a number of the most common genres. So please, do me a favour and manually re-label all my tracks "Foreign" when you get them, ok?

Thank you

Alternative topic of the month: "Breaking up a fight"

Sitting on the stairs to the opera house (the Gothenburg one, not the Sydney one), eating my lunch. This was three years ago, I was going through the beginning of a break-up. My nerves were jingle jangled and I hadn't slept much but my heart was full of compassion as it can be when you're down on your luck. I spent my days walking around aimlessly.

In front of me there was a scene going on, a man and a woman, they were arguing about a phone. I think the phone was secondary to something bigger, earlier, but this was what they were shouting about. - "Give me back my phone, it's my phone". - "You're crazy, you know that?" - "Just give me back my phone".

Because of the way the operahouse is constructed, we found ourselves in what resembled an amphitheatre. The man and the woman were actors down there. The rest of the crowd were businessmen, they had finished their sushi and now they seemed equally bothered and amused with the play that took part in front of us. Someone picked up a camera and filmed a bit while snickering to himself.

The tension built up quickly when the man, who was much larger than the woman, grabbed her arm and shook her. This wasn't funny anymore, someone was going to hit someone. In my mind images flashed by, stories about people being assaulted while no one intervened. Stories like this. I had promised myself to not be a bystander but breaking up this fight would also mean I would have to walk onto stage and enter this play. Why me? Why not the masculine guy in the shirt and tie to my left? He looked like an authority figure. That's when the hand hit the face and I ran up to them.

What came out of my mouth was the voice of a twelve year old, desperately fighting back the tears - "Stop it you guys, just please... stop it". It was the most pathetic sound ever uttered. It was so pathetic that I could instantly hear people leave, as if physically trying to escape the awkwardness of the situation. Months later someone would show me the famous Leave Britney Alone clip when I told this story and I would think "that's the voice, oh my god, that's what I sounded like".

It was so pathetic that it worked. The fight stopped, the man and the woman just stared at me. For a few seconds we just stood there, then a swift move and the woman ran off with the phone. The man, making an angry face, walked off to the water. I walked off too, with my voice echoing behind me. That voice, it would take years to get it out of my head. 

The topic for the month of August is "Picking a fight".

Walking through Vasaparken I was reminded of an evening seven years ago, sitting under a tree with some friends and discussing whatever was the talk of the town at that time. The usual punks and drunks were forming little islands here and there, scattered across the parks lush interior. I was reaching for my thermos when two guys appeared in the distance, setting a wobbly course towards us. Words came out of their mouths but they were slurred and incomprehensible. They were giggling as they reached for sticks that they started beating us with. Someone said - "Aw, c'mon, stop it". Someone else said -"What!?". They stumbled off towards one of the punk islands where they found some beer - to sit down and drink you would think, but no. They wobbled back to us where they started pouring it over us, all this time while giggling hysterically.

Deep down I could feel something I hadn't felt in years, something stuffed down my throat like a rag stuffed in a petrol filled bottle. I stood up and pushed one of them to the ground. The other guy started walking off with my friends bike so I ran after him and pushed him too. My friend noticed her CD player was missing from her bike basket so I went after them, followed them back to the punk island where they had seeked refuge. "Give her back her CD player" I shouted but they were just giggling at me. I wanted to beat these guys up so bad. I wanted to smack the drunkenness out of their heads so that I could sit down with them in a quiet room and explain to them what assholes they were. I wanted to take them back to school, my right fist being their new teacher.

Then one of the punks spoke up - "Hey, aren't you that guy? In that video?". Someone else filled in - "Yeah, you're that cheesy singer in the knights armour, aren't you?". I said - "Yes... yes I am". Someone picked up their phone and said - "Hey guess who's here, that Don Quixote guy from TV, and he's all mad and stuff". My mushy red face paled a bit and I turned and walked back. I said to my friend - "I don't think they had your CD player anyway".

My thoughts are with Norway today

4:02 - From Siberia to the end of the world and back again

Thank you Evgeny Z

An Argument With Myself EP
By Jens Lekman

1. An Argument With Myself
2. Waiting for Kirsten
3. A Promise
4. New Directions
5. So This Guy At My Office

While working on my upcoming album, I found that a few songs were disrupting the order, fucking up the flow. They were juvenile delinquents, they refused to fall in line with the others. I had to isolate them on this EP as a little taste of what's not to come.

To be released Sept 19th in the UK and Sept 20th in the rest of the world
On CD, digital, vinyl and a limited edition picture disc.

With love,
J

USA!

Sept 28 - Los Angeles, CA - Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Sept 29 - San Francisco, CA - California Academy of Sciences
Oct 1 - Seattle, WA - Columbia
Oct 3 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
Oct 5 - Washington DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
Oct 6 - Philadelphia, PA - Philadelphia Ethical Society
Oct 7 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg
Oct 8 - Boston, MA - Somerville Armory
Oct 9 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg

Performing with just a drummer for these shows.
European shows coming up soon. 

Too
Lazy
To
Make
A
Summer
Mix
This
Year

I need a nice thought to focus on when I go to sleep tonight, it will have to be The Self Transcendence 3100 Mile Race. Every year in Queens, NY, a group of people set out on a race that goes on for weeks. They run almost two and a half marathons per day to complete the 3100 miles that the race consists of. But they stay within one city block in which they make 5649 laps.

I imagine what it would be like to run a hundred miles, only to realise you have three thousand to go.

Just a normal evening at the studio, the sun is setting behind the church tower, Iron Maiden is playing outside my window.

And in the paper, Svenskt Näringsliv, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, is complaining about the lazy liberal arts students who are not thinking about either their future or the national economy. If there's one word that's been thrown around a lot the last years it's 'lazy'. The sick are lazy, they should try to go to work a bit more. The unemployed are lazy, they're not trying hard enough to get a job. The liberal arts students are lazy, they should study something else and study it harder.

But the only one in Sweden being lazy is me. I have my art studies behind me, I've taken four years to finish a new record, and tonight, on this lazy summer evening I'm standing here listening to Maiden with a cold beer and later on I will go home and think "phew... what a day, I should probably take tomorrow off so I don't exhaust myself completely".

There's interesting news coming up this month and very soon I will be working like a dog. But for now, if you want to write to me, the topic of the month is 'lazy'.

I'm in Colorado

This is todays venue

Thanks so much for the houseshow in Denver on thursday

ADVERTISEMENT

My friend Emma loves the smiley face plastic bags you get in New York as much as I do. You know the one with the smiley that looks only slightly happy, that says "thank you, have a nice day" but should say "thank you i guess and have a somewhat nice day". Problem is you bring one home but it breaks. It might be recyclable, but it should be reusable. So she made these totebags, perfect replicas. I love mine.

Order it

As I am listening to the final mixes for a new EP in the first rays of sunshine, a member of a marching band is rushing by the window, on his way to celebrate the day of yellow and blue. Happy birthday to you old elongated country from which soil I have raised.

Beside me on the table is "Enormous Changes At The Last Minute" by Grace Paley. I discovered her last year and it was a voice I'd been looking for. Warm, funny, compassionate. Someone who sees the world outside and her part in it.

Maybe you'd like her too. Hopefully. Cause I'm making her the topic of this month, the month of June that is. And no, reading her wikipedia isn't good enough. I want you to have read one of her stories if you're gonna write to me. That's right, I want you to put on your boots and march down to the library and pick out one of her books and read. Yes, I'm giving you homework. Stop whining.

Jens - What do you call that part of the hospital, where the newborns are?

Tig - Girlfriend

Date: 17 maj 2011 20.04.47 CEST
To: Smalltalk@JensLekman.com
Subject: (без темы)

Dear Jens,

There is the funny intellectual game made by my girlfriend. It calls "To dress Jens" in Russian.
http://cs5216.vkontakte.ru/u3259674/116784781/z_a05fd01b.jpg
Hope you enjoy it =)

How was your weekend? I had a good one, finished up my work for the week, went to vote in the landstingsfullmäktigevalet and then got on the train to Stockholm.

I'm finding my way around the capital city a little better now than in the old days. I navigate by events in my life, I know I'm crashing on a couch that is inbetween the bridge where I learned to never tell a lie ever again and the piano bar where I learned a little storytelling can get you far. Halfway between truth and fiction, that's my home for the night.

I went to a danceparty allnighter which was the best time ever. Danced until six in the morning with my old friend Jens (a different Jens) who collects records for a living and would shout at every other song "oh my god, this single only exists in five copies". It was good to release some energy after sitting with my mixes for several weeks, I feel focused now, monday morning and back to work.

A friend took this photo on Friday before I left, when I got back the blossom had fallen, the tree was almost bare. But the feeling was still there, waiting for me to come home to it.

The funeral you've worked your whole life for

Somehow it doesn't even surprise me.

My landlord Elin is doing a festival in the Gothenburg archipelago called Knarrholmen. They've rented a whole island for a weekend of good music and fun. Me and Henning Fürst will be DJ:ing. Last time I DJ:ed, on a boat - Styrbord Babord, the boat almost sank when I started playing. Sad of course since the boat is now out of business, but it's definitely going in my curriculum vitae. And I'm telling you this as a hint. There are more ships to sink, maybe even an island.

I signed a comedian to Secretly Canadian.

Topic for the month of May: Jealousy

Just twelve more days now until Chris Lilley's new show Angry Boys premieres. If you haven't seen his two earlier shows, the touching and very very funny We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, there is now just about enough time to squeeze them in so you can be updated and ready. I started watching Lilleys shows when I had just moved to Melbourne, when people were retelling last nights episode over an afternoon beer in the park. His characters (he plays all the main characters himself) are often even more life-like than the people he's portraying, and like in all great comedy he shows compassion for them. The very last episode of Summer Heights High, when the troubled Tongan teenager Jonah gets his revenge, had me fighting against the tears.

Come down to Styrbord Babord tonight. It's Maundy Thursday and I'm the DJ.
Looking forward to see your face.

This is love

I was over at my folks place digging through my old tapes and cd's and found a bunch of recordings I made in San Francisco christmas 2005. It's just piano, completely instrumental. I have no idea where I was going with it, I can't even play piano. I play piano like E.T - two fingers.

But it made me think back on that trip and how weird everything in my life was around that time. And I thought maybe someone else could relate to it somehow. Or maybe just enjoy the fragmented pieces.

"Du Gamla, Du Fria" is the swedish national anthem. I have no idea why I recorded that. But I've always liked the melody.

The tracks were recorded by Gary Olson, who was sitting in the basement drinking whiskey and reading a book, occasionally mumbling something encouraging through the floorboards. I set up a mic by the piano upstairs and dropped the cable down to him through the window.

Topic for the month of April: Parsnip

You know how this works

In Stockholm today. Been rehearsing with a new drummer all afternoon, her name is Cissi and she normally plays in Those Dancing Days. Question all drummers should ask when applying for a position in my band : "Is it ok if I dance while I'm playing?" (the answer to that would be yes).

How delightful ! My dear friend Matt Wolf's new movie "Teenage" about the history of the teenager, is now up for a little sneak peak. Matt's previous movie was the Arthur Russell documentary "Wild Combination" which is one of the greatest music documentaries I've ever seen. I'm very excited about this one.

Teenage - the blog
Matt Wolf's website

And since I just linked to it, I'll confess that Matt's website is where I once stole the blue colour for my own website. Just want to be honest about that.

Everyone around me is talking about night bus. Night bus, night bus, night bus. I download the now somewhat famous mixtape and listen and like it. Rainy and sad like a night that promised more than it could hold. But the one track on the mixtape that I LOVE is a different kind of nightbus. My kind of nightbus.

I'd barely touched ground in London friday night before someone had nicked my phone and wallet. Luckily I was hanging out with the lovely promoters of saturday nights show, a group of cheerful indiepop enthusiasts. I don't think the Westminster police station has ever been that cheerful - "So Jens, what's your favourite band ?.. and what Morrisey quote would you have as a tattoo?"

So I'm in London with almost no money and an old spare phone with a dead battery, but the sun is shining and I'm discovering London from a side I've never seen it from before - the daytime! I didn't know you guys had parks here. Why hasn't anyone told me?

The event last night was sold out and the room was full of love. I know a lot of people wanted to go and I'm sorry all the shows I'm doing right now are so small and few, I don't mean to exclude anyone, but I don't have time to go on tour at the moment and I don't have time to put together big shows for big venues. I really don't want to do big shows at all really, it makes me think of a chapter in Steve Martins "Born Standing Up" where he mentions dealing with a heckler in front of a baseball stadium (everyone can hear Steve, but no one can hear the heckler). Friday night I did a show in a warehouse for maybe 40-50 people, that was fun. The people there had fun. I had fun. Even the hecklers had fun.

Oh yes, and then the purpose of saturday nights show: a library benefit. Nearly a thousand libraries here in Britain face closure in order to save money. I don't live here but there are other worrying things happening in Sweden right now, with talk about privatizing libraries to make them more efficient, replacing quality with quantity. Libraries are always worth fighting for, but right now a little bit extra. Keep them open and free please.

I think there's roughly 30 songs circulating in my head at the moment, thirty songs to be juggled and constantly kept in the air. When one doesn't work you move to the next, and so on. And each one is a little diamond that I put under my pillow when I go to sleep. But there's a problem when you put them together, it's the dramaturgy isn't it ? I send them to a friend - yes, something's wrong with the albums flow.

So what do you do? You open the window, that's what you do. The friend offers to take a look at it, offer some new perspectives. I trust and admire him enough to give him free hands - "tear through it like a lion through a zebra" I tell him. "Send it back in reversed stripes"

It's a good time to take a break and run through some songs for the London show this weekend. Try to memorize my own lyrics which I usually forget. Bad body memory, that's why I'll never be a dancer. I remember a speech therapist telling me about the right side of my brain and rappers who overcame stuttering. The singing on some of the new songs is kind of rhythmical like rapping, and those songs don't stumble or disappear when I sing them. They come from the flesh.

The window's open, and there's a sound - a house sound - I've been trying to figure out what it is. It's always at night, and it's too dark to really see what curtain is flapping or what board is creaking, I basically live in the woods right now. So I reach my head out as far as I can and it's not a house sound - it's a deer trying to get into our compost. Flap flap, creak, flap.

In the recent light of the charges being dropped against Blackstaby pigfarm here in Sweden, and instead turned against the people who filmed the horrible abuse that went on in there, it feels like a good time to do a benefit show for Djurrättsalliansen / the Animal Rights Alliance.

Djurrättsalliansen
Ett liv som gris
Grisvittnena

Here's the info:

April 7th
Göteborg, Sweden
Henriksberg

Tickets available at Pustervik March 17th

From Mark Schweikle:

"I spotted this scrawled in the muck on a Chicago bus stop and thought you might want to see it"

 Today I smelled manure in the air which is a good sign. The smell of shit always travels on warm winds.

I woke up today and thought of Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery". I wondered if they perhaps had made a movie adaptation of it. And they had.

And while we're at it, why don't we make that the topic of the month. Sorry about the absence of topics, let's get the smalltalk happening again.

PART 1



PART 2

The tree where old formats go to die

photo by Julie Bates

London, March 19th - Read and shout!

Support the libraries.

Benefit show.

x

from Dagens Nyheter

The sweetest thing. Thank you Tove.

photo by Erlend Öye

I'm writing this on the train from Bergen, Norway. I had a lot of emailing to do and I thought I could just as well do it on the night train there and back. By the time I get it up on the website I'm guessing it's 2011. So happy new year to all of you.

I'm still working on my next record, I know it's been a while. It's taken a long time because it started to take shape only a few months ago. Up until then it was a cluster of everything. As if you would have dug your hand down your pocket and just thrown the contents on the table - sort of like my three last albums and there's nothing wrong with them but this one's an Album. It's been trying to tell me that the whole time.

It's been trying to tell me that I don't have much say in this, that the process is not like building from the ground up, but rather like unfolding from the top down. I set out to write about anything but myself and ended up writing only about myself and maybe 3-4 other people who really don't serve any other purpose than to reflect myself. It's been trying to tell me that a self portrait is not just a dialogue between you and yourself, but it's also a dialogue with a third person - the beholder. Or in a larger perspective - society. Yeah right album, whatever you say.

I set out to write about anything but heartbreak, and ended up writing almost entirely about it. I felt like a war correspondent, wishing for a small column about gardening. Putting on my helmet and my bulletproof vest one more day. It said: You're doing a good thing, remember all the people who write to you with their stories. All they want is someone to tell them theirs so they know they're not alone. I said : Yeah yeah yeah.

But we seem to agree on the sound. I said "aerodynamic". It said "cool".

I'm gonna keep my mouth shut now because we still have a long way to go and I have no idea where it will lead me eventually. But my plan is to get this and an EP out this year.

Over and out.
J