Yes, I know I'm the last in the world but there is now an official Twitter account in my name. This is run by the nice people at my management. I won't be using it, but they will have the freshest news for you when I will be too busy to update you here.

Also, I'm going to have to take down the fake Jens Lekmans on Facebook because they are creating a lot of confusion and heartache for me, mostly in my personal life when friends think I'm ignoring them. If any of you who read this happens to own one of the accounts and want to keep it, email me and we'll figure something out. Otherwise, me and my bulldozers will head in sometime next week and turn them all into one official page, also run by my management. 

As always, all communication goes through smalltalk. Don't change the frequency.

The last couple of weeks have been filled with interviews. One thing most journalists ask me is, since the album is a break up album, if making an album like this helps you be done with the heartache. To which I reply no, if there is any conclusion on this album it would be that a broken heart is something you carry with you, for better or for worse.

But when we sit there talking, and the preview copy of the album lies on the table inbetween us next to our cups of coffee, I find myself looking at it and thinking "That's that... All that time and all those feelings are on that CD. And I'm done with it now". And like a tombstone is for the living, and not for the dead, I can leave it there and move on. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Have you read Joe Brainard's "I Remember"? You Should.

I wrote earlier this year about the song contest we used to have at our old school. Like a miniature Eurovision, the highlight of the year. Then in my dad's record collection I found this vinyl single of the winner of said song contest in 1984, apparently back then they let you record the song and print it. Anyway, the song is brilliant, funky punky music school disco! Maybe more interesting if you know swedish, but still. I ripped it to my computer and since there was a part in the middle that sounded really bad (old vinyl, poorly recorded guitar solo) I did a quick re-edit (Re-edit is such a fancy term for five minutes of copy and paste). 

Lisette - Asfaltsdans (Asphalt Dance)

PS. I think I should repeat the concept behind the "topic of the month" for those of you who are new. Each month (well, most months) I pick a topic. This topic should be the main subject of your e-mail if you want to write to me. If you want to talk about something else you can make associations, find reference points.

This is mainly because I see our communication as an exchange, not a service. It's a source of inspiration to me. And it makes me feel a bit less lonely at the end of the day :-)

I heard someone on TV a few days ago lamenting about how the youth of today is less rebellious than they were 30 years ago. This was in reference to his youth as a satanic priest.

It made me think of a conversation I once had, I think it was five years ago and I was doing an interview when we came into the subject of youth culture and teenage rebellion. The journalist was disappointed that it seemed like music and youth culture wasn't evolving, that kids weren't revolting against their parents anymore. She was specifically thinking of how indiepop still had such a grip on the younger generation, that they were listening to the same bands and wearing the same clothes as their parents. That they were so nice and polite. Oh, and by indiepop she meant the specific subculture. She meant the people who wear their fringe like Roger McGuinn's as Edwyn Collins once sang. 

But I had to disagree. I mean, when your parents revolted against their parents by doing the opposite and expect you to revolt against them, what better way to revolt against your parents by not revolting? By dressing up the same way, listen to the same music and annoy the hell out of them? I may be wrong. Maybe it's that mass unemployment and lack of housing has made a generation scared of being on bad terms with the older generation. It's just that everytime I hear someone say that young people don't rebel against their parents anymore it seems they have failed to see how intelligent and small scaled teenage rebellion can be.

The topic of the month is teenage rebellion. Tell me about yours.

Me and Kristian are DJ:ing at Saltsjobar in Stockholm tomorrow, friday the 29th from 17:00 - 23:00. It's the bar at Elite Hotel Marina Towers, Saltsjoqvarns Kaj 25. Be there in person or in spirit or in both.

My friend Marcus Soderlund shot two videos for me a few weeks back. I wanted them as simple and straight as possible. Naked. Honest. No storyline. They were both done in one take each and the first one, Erica America, is here.

The future as I see it
(more to come soon)

NORTH AMERICA

Nov 14 - Houston, TX - Fitzgerald's
Nov 13 - Austin, TX - The Mohawk
Nov 12 - Dallas, TX - Granada Theater
Nov 9 - Phoenix, AZ - The Crescent Ballroom
Nov 8 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
Nov 6 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre
Nov 5 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore Auditorium
Nov 3 - Portland, OR - Aladdin Theater
Nov 2 - Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
Nov 1 - Seattle, WA - Neptune
Oct 16 - Atlanta, GA - Variety
Oct 15 - Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle
Oct 13 - Richmond, VA - National
Oct 12 - Washington, DC - 930 Club
Oct 11 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
Oct 8 - New York, NY - Terminal 5
Oct 6 - Boston, MA - Royale
Oct 5 - Montreal, QB - National
Oct 4 - Toronto, ON - Phoenix
Oct 2 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
Oct 1 - Bloomington, IN - Buskirk-Chumley Theater

EUROPE

Sept 26 - Berlin, DE - Postbahnhof
Sept 25 - Utrecht, NL - Tivoli de Helling
Sept 24 - Strasbourg, FR - La Laiterie
Sept 23 - Paris, FR - Gaite Lyrique
Sept 21 - Brighton, UK - The Haunt
Sept 20 - London, UK - Hackney Empire
Sept 19 - Manchester, UK - Ruby Lounge
Sept 17 - Stockholm, SE - Dramaten
Sept 15 - Gothenburg, SE - Pustervik
Sept 14 - Malmo, SE - KB
Sept 13 - Oslo, NO - Rockefeller
Sept 12 - Copenhagen, DK - Vega
Sept 11 - Aarhus, DK - Train
Sept 10 - Helsinki, FI - Tavastia
July 28 - Castelbasso, IT - Soundlabs Festival

I did a mix for my friend Malin's web magazine Mint, on the topic "Holes". From cavities to summerholes to tunnels and assholes. Not sure if it makes sense to people outside Sweden or to anyone at all but there's no reason everything has to make sense all the time.

Like Paris where I'm at right now to do interviews and photo sessions and where nothing makes sense and why should it. I go for a walk through the warm summer evening, it's the day of music here today so the streets are full of musicians and people. Day of music? As if Paris is silent the other 364 days? I buy some chips and a fizzy drink. Outside my hotel an old woman says something to me in french and I ask her if she speaks english to which she replies with a laugh, hands me a coin and leaves with a smile. What was that all about?

My friend A says doing press is the best cause you realize what you actually were thinking with the record while you're talking. Which is true but I came prepared this time. I lined up my old cuddly toys and teddybears in front of me at home before I left and then I imagined the questions I would get. Panda - You've taken five years to finish this record, what's been going on? Snowleopard - What has been your main musical influence on this album? Mr Snugglepuff - How much is real? How much is fiction?

No topic for this month but I'll have one for July. Gotta run now, got a date with Eurostar.

Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't
To be released September 4th

1. Every Little Hair Knows Your Name
2. Erica America
3. Become Someone Else's
4. Some Dandruff on Your Shoulder
5. She Just Don't Want to Be With You Anymore
6. I Want a Pair of Cowboy Boots
7. The World Moves On
8. The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love
9. I Know What Love Isn't
10. Every Little Hair Knows Your Name

Foreword by Jon Coombs:

Tracey Thorn wrote a song that reached Jens in the early stages of his new album, I Know What Love Isn't. In her song she sang "Oh Jens, oh Jens / your songs seem to look through a different lens / you're still so young, love ends just as easy as it's begun." A touching moment for the Swedish songwriter, having been a fan since his teens. But it came to him in a time when he found himself very confused and in doubt. He was changing and, subsequently, so were his songs. They weren't looking through that lens anymore.

I Know What Love Isn't came out of a break up, something Jens didn't see as worth writing about at first. The songs began more fleeting than the last go around, on his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala. The songs began building from images and memories and soon began to take their own route, one that Lekman wasn't privy to their destination. In "The World Moves On" he paints a picture of a sweltering summer in the city of Melbourne where he lived while writing and recording the album. The hot days that led up to the Black Saturday bushfires, but also more mundane images of feeding possums in a park or getting in trouble with some guy on a scooter. It seems to lead nowhere at first but the aimlessness in itself reaches heartbreaking conclusions later on, summed up by the soaring chorus "and you don't get over a broken heart, you just learn to carry it gracefully". Like Joan Didion once said that she writes entirely to find out what she's thinking, Jens wrote until he caught up with his thoughts. And of course they led him right back to the break up.

Musically, I Know What Love Isn't chooses an economic route. From the vast palette he created for Kortedala, he's only chosen a few sombre colors this time around. There are strings but not a string section, an upright piano and not a grand, a single saxophone and gracenotes from a flute. The songs are lighter, almost aerodynamic, Jens explains - "I wanted the songs to take off almost unnoticeably, where the chorus is separated from the verse only through a small detail like a tambourine or a harmony. Like when you're in an airplane taking off and you look out the window and realize you're already in the air." A dry country piano makes "Become Someone Else's" lift high. Vocals from Melbourne singer Sophie Brous makes the chorus in "Erica America" soar. Strings pick up the title track and send it up to the sky without much effort or force.

In the latter, Lekman once again points the way to distill essential truths from every day life vignettes while singing about a sham marriage. "I thought of the Friday nights when I'd be cruising up and down the street with my best friend in her old crappy Holden, talking about getting married to get me into the country. The idea was so appealing, that we would build this constructed relationship around a purpose rather than some vague feeling that could change at anytime. But in the end, the sham marriage is much too great a story to be kept secret. At least when you make a living from telling stories."

And that's what I Know What Love Isn't... is. A collection of songs that grew to a story that had to be told. A story that is not new, but essentially human. The story of the grey areas of love that you have to excavate and explore, using the method of exclusion, to find out what love is.

This summer, enjoy a solo performance by me in the medieval village of Castelbasso, Italy. Also playing is Thurston Moore! I like when I'm paired up with someone unexpected like that and the intersecting fanbase show up. The ones who take the gentle with the rough.

More info here.

I was going to the countryside two years ago when a french photographer named Julien Bourgeois contacted me about taking some photos for a book. Sure I said, come visit me in the countryside. So I showed him around, the rocky cliffs, the lush forests and the little cematary where my grandparents were buried. It ended up in a nice little book together with many other swedish musicians and their latitudes and longitudes.

Read more here.

Honedrips Mikael sent me this song. He said I would love it and he knows me so well. The finest little ballad I've heard all year.

Rita ett svart x på min hand
Och gick in till Rewell och
Sen gjorde vi kanske inte så mycket mer
Stod och hängde en stund där över räcket
Stod väl där och försökte tänka som Dennis Lyxzén
Såg väl nån som hade varit nazi och sen for man hem

For those of you who don't know swedish, listen to Mattias lovely english project Cats On Fire instead. There's no use in translating these lyrics, they would lose their particular swedish-finnish flavour.

June 15

Brooklyn

New York

McCarren Park

Northside Festival

w/ Of Montreal & The Thermals

Tickets here

Happy Summertime!

The topic for the month of May is : Coffee

When people ask me about my production rate the last five years I sometimes say "Well you can't pour manure in an espresso machine and expect a cappucino to come out". By which I mean that some things you just go through, you don't write about them or make art out of them.

But then my friend informed me that the worlds finest and most expensive coffee is made out of the shit from a small civet. So that backfired on me.

But I've grinded these beans for you now and I finished the last mixes last night. I just have some mastering to do and some design to finish. Two-three different bands to rehearse with for the tours. Three videos to make. A million interviews to sit through. A few months to let the distributors and labels set up their plans. A summer of being worried about what you're going to think of the album. And then it will be out.

How do you take it? Milk? Sugar?

Good morning students. This friday the 20th I will be DJ:ing with some friends at Marie Laveau in Stockholm. And then, next saturday the 28th I'll be doing the same thing at Klubb Heartland in Lund. Attendance is compulsory.

I flew over the Andes once, on a South American tour three years ago. It was a big thing for me, I'd always wanted to see the Andes. Two weeks later I flew over the Norwegian mountains on my way home. I looked down and realized I'd travelled to the other side of the world for something that we already had around the corner.

Then last week I took the ferry over to Denmark, just a stone's throw away, to take some photos in Raabjerg Mile and around Rubjerg Knude Fyr. Sanddunes stretched out like a desert and an abandoned lighthouse was buried in the sand like some remnant of a passed civilisation. Google it. It looks like the end of the world.

I think I've talked about it before, but for travellers I really recommend reading "A Journey Around My Room" by Xavier de Maistre, in which the narrator who is sentenced to house arrest takes the opportunity to go on a voyage through his living room. It served as a parody of the grand travel narrative of the time and it still serves as a parody of our modern ideas of why we travel and how far we think we need to go.

He wrote a sequel to it as well. "A Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room" in which he repeats the journey. Same room, but this time at night.

I pass by the water tower in Guldheden for a cup of coffee one sunday afternoon, a place I've recommended to a few people who've written me for advice on what to in Gothenburg. On the wall next to elevator I see this little lovely graffiti and take a photo. And then when I zoom in later, this!

Elle, if that is your name, you made my day today.

The topic for April comes in the form of an exclusion: No Love Stories

Write to me about whatever you want except love.

I'm playing Knarrholmen this year. That is the only show I have planned this very moment, until the new album comes out.

Knarrholmen is exactly the kind of festival Gothenburg needs as a counterweight to the monsterfestival that Way Out West has become. Taking place during one weekend in the gap between spring and summer, a handful bands (just as many as you can cope with) play on two stages on an island in the beautiful Gothenburg archipelago. I was there last year to DJ, it was magic.

The best thing about Knarrholmen is that it has every opportunity to become a recurring and beloved festival, but it can not outgrow itself for one very obvious reason - it is on an island.

I've given up some old out-of-print vinylsingles for an auction. It's for a little baby with a fragile heart.

My dear friends in Air France have decided to give up. Contrary to what many think, giving up is often an admirable thing. It takes a lot of guts. And out of what once was, something new will grow. It makes me sad, but I know they will be back in one shape or another. Thank you for the good times.

I forgot about the topic this month, I've been working like a dog, there's a final deadline and I'm so close to being done. The skin under my wrist watch is as bright as the sun it hasn't seen.

I was thinking the topic this month could've been the arms industry, in regards to the last entry. How it has grown to become a fixture in our economy, employing thousands, and how hard it is for it to readjust to producing new products since bombs and tanks are so specific in their construction. But also how a gradual reconstruction would definitely be possible and should be on the agenda. But it seemed too serious right now when I have little time to delve deeper into these things.

Then I thought about the movie I saw some time ago, which I really enjoyed. About the lovers who meet and spend a weekend together, and in two days sort out what takes most people their whole twenties and thirties and maybe their whole lives to figure out. The stubborn cynic versus the idealist romantic. I thought it seemed like something you would like to talk about, but then I worried too many of you would write.

No, maybe for the remaining days of march I'll just let the topic be whatever you want it to be. Why don't you just write me your usual stories about your loves and lives. I enjoy them. In a world of mouths I want to be an ear.

Today I'm thinking about the Swedish arms export. I would like to think about something else but the other things I have to think about are so diffuse while the Swedish arms export is not diffuse at all. It's there and it's very real and it's the largest arms export in the world per capita.

It's in trouble today. But it's been fine and growing for decades. And while the question right now seems to be "Have they been lying to us?", the question should maybe be "Why is the Swedish government defending our arms export to a dictatorship?".
Or just "Why is Sweden exporting arms to a dictatorship?"
Or "Why is Sweden exporting arms?"
Or "Why arms?"
Or maybe just "Why?"

Alfred Nobel established the Nobel peace prize. He also invented dynamite. He said that his dynamite would lead to peace because when it's clear to man what forces lie within these explosives and what damage they could cause, people would refrain from using them. But yeah... it didn't really work out that way.

Swedes, sign here

I'm DJ:ing with my friend Kristian at Clooney's this Thursday. It's the release party for the new issue of the architect magazine 4 Ark. More info here: http://0ark.se/blog/

I wanted to take a ride in the somewhat new ferris wheel today. So I walked down to the harbour only to find it's been deconstructed and taken away. It's moved to the big amusement park in town. Well fair enough, I know how to wait.

All cities have a ferris wheel now. It's the cool kid's new jacket. They built a new one in Melbourne just when I had moved there, the Southern Star. But just as it was finished it was hit by a brutal heatwave, the same heatwave that eventually lead up to Black Saturday. 46 Celsius and the metal expanded and cracked until it was rendered useless. At least that's what they said at first, and it was a comic relief in a time of tragedy. Who doesn't love grand engineering malfunctioning due to local climate? The wheel just stood there by the waterfront, nonoperational and sad, until you started feeling sorry for it.

The Gothenburg ferris wheel is a modest wheel. Not even half as high as the London Eye. It's not the cool kid's jacket. It is the somewhat similar copy of the cool kid's jacket that your mum buys from a cheap mailorder company. Half a year too late, when it's not cool anymore. It is a jacket you hate until it starts falling apart and gets dirty, old and familiar. Like a streetdog hanging around your house until someone says "who's he?" and you say "he lives here".

The topic for the month of february is : urban planning

I figured out the laughing with the help of this guy. But feel free to send me your laughter anyway.

I'm trying to record laughter but it's not going all too well. My friends find it hard to laugh under pressure. Is there anyone who has a nice heartfelt laugh that I could borrow? Needs to be female.

ADVERTISEMENT

Are you a band looking to record some songs? Try my friends at Studio Sonores. It's not the fanciest studio in the world, it's in an old bomb shelter, it's a bit cold in there and inconvenient to get to. But as opposed to most other studios they understand that music sometimes wants to sound warm, wobbly and fuzzy, like a seaotter sleeping in a toaster. If you know what I mean. I don't like studios in general or the people who work in them, that's why I love Studio Sonores.

That's the Melbourne skyline seen from Ruckers Hill, as I remember it. I used to go there every night, look at the city and think "This is where I live now."

But I don't live there anymore. Things got too complicated, I couldn't rent an apartment or a work space since I didn't have a proper visa. I couldn't get a job and I had the strangest insurance and healthcare arrangments. I was technically on a very very very long vacation.

Maybe it's because the sun goes down before I go up here. Maybe it's because I've listened to Who Are You from the Twerps album 50 times in a row today. But I miss Melbourne a lot right now. I miss my best friend D. I miss our plans to get married to get me into the country. I miss the excitement over the arrangment in itself, it is after all the only form of relationship that is truly open and honest about its intentions. I miss our talks, my cynicism vs. her optimism. I miss how she always won the argument.

But in the end, the sham marriage is a much too great story to be kept a secret. At least when you make a living from telling stories. I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut or not write a song about it.

It's not a huge problem, there are worse problems in the world. You make a decision and then you deal with it, that's what my old shrink used to say. But the dream planted a seed and the seed grew into a tree and I'm just not sure how to chop that thing down.

Tell him.

I'm reading a book. It's a book about the climate changes, it's thick and it covers a lot of evolutionary theory. It talks about spandrels, characteristics that are simply byproducts of another characteristic. It talks about the chin.

"The chin is where it is because it is the only bridge that can merge the human jawbone, whose function for the organism is obvious - to allow food intake. But the chin as such has never been subject to natural selection. It lacks adaptive origin."

I put the book back on the shelf. Anyone with a heart (and a chin) knows that the function of the chin is so much more than a bridge between our jawbones. It's there to be kept up when the times are hard. It's there to lean against a lovers shoulder, or rest against a clenched fist. It's there to measure the length of a tear, a finishing line if you will. How could these features not have affected natural selection?

I'm waiting for the tram, the famous number seven, when the number one passes by. I look up and see an advertisement for Laleh. It's a concert. At Scandinavium. Laleh is playing at Scandinavium!

There used to be a song contest at our school in Hammarkullen, like a mini Eurovision. The kids got to write songs, have someone perform them, and then everyone got to vote. It was one of the highlights of the year. In year nine I remember watching the rehearsals with my heavy metal friends, snickering like Beavis and Butthead at all the cheesy lovesongs. Then a young girl from year seven stepped up and started singing and it was the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. It melted even the heaviest metal. We just sat there.

The summer after she called me, said her name was Laleh, said she got my number from Tommy who got it from Farzad who got it from someone. She had heard I played guitar and maybe I could help her form a band to play her songs? I gathered up a drummer and a saxophonist and got a rehearsal space. We played the local youth centers, it was a bit hit and miss. Laleh was great, but we weren't the right band for her. Too inexperienced, in music and in life.

Just before we fell out of touch I asked her to listen to one of my songs. She said she really liked it. I blushed. I'm not sure what happened after that, my diary pages from that time doesn't tell. But what they do tell is that I all of a sudden started writing songs like crazy. It was like the cambrian explosion. I was inspired.

I'm sure Laleh could sell out Scandinavium anytime, she's a star. But it just hasn't hit me until I saw this advertisement on the tram today. Scandinavium. That's huge! I work around the corner from there, in the shadow of that building, I'm gonna go and get a ticket on my lunchbreak.

On the topic of platonic love, which I think we should make the topic of this month:

"Armisen and Brownstein text each other every night before bed. Brownstein says of their friendship, "Sometimes I think it's the most successful love affair either of us will ever have." Both claim that it wouldn't work if they were romantically involved. "It would be colder, because we've both treated our romantic relationships in a cold way," Armisen says. "Carrie and I are more romantic than any other romantic relationship I've ever had - that sense of anticipation about seeing the other person, the secret bond. But things don't become obligatory. I'm not thinking, I'm doing this because you're my girlfriend; I'm just thinking, I love Carrie.""