Pitchfork

Photo by Emma Svensson

In the press materials for Night Falls Over Kortedala-- out October 9 Stateside on Secretly Canadian and September 5 Scandinavia-ways on Service-- Jens Lekman calls the titular Gothenburg neighborhood where he dwells "a depressing suburban hell."

"As soon as I've finished this record," he concludes, after claiming he's been mugged more times than he can count, "I will get the hell out of here."

Yet nothing on Night Falls-- neither cover art nor music-- suggests this dreary descriptor. And indeed, when we phoned Jens the other day for a chat about the new record, we were quite surprised to learn the young troubadour has had a sudden and near-complete change of heart about the place he calls home.

"Ever since I wrote that on my website I think that everything has been changed," Jens disclosed. "For some reason I'm not getting mugged anymore [laughs]. I'm starting to like it, almost. But at one point I was just kind of fed up-- maybe it's a facial expression I have or something, I attract people who want to mug me. But it's just a very sleepy place. People go here mainly to sleep and work. And so, during the daytime, it's an old people's paradise, and then during nighttime it's basically completely empty except for a few people, a few gangsters."

Chalk the 180 up to what may well be a bit of divine intervention. "A few weeks back, this stranger came up to me and said, 'I read somewhere that you don't like this place, and I kind of don't like it either, but I think we have to explore this place first before we judge it, and check it out.' So we just went out for a little safari during nighttime and checked out the neighborhood and it was beautiful. Just completely empty."

Despite the new perspective, Jens still intends to leave Kortadala, at least for a spell. "I have to move. I think I've just decided I have to live somewhere where there's palm trees for a little while. I've lived here my whole life. I was born five minutes from here, so I have to go somewhere just for a year."

He's thinking about setting up shop in Melbourne, Australia, as part of "a huge exploration next year in the Southern Hemisphere. We're actually thinking about going to Antarctica, for a while... I've been saving for years to go there."

If a sudden move to Australia and trip to Antarctica sounds a bit drastic, recall that this is a man who destroyed a bunch of his recordings and quit music to work in a bingo hall, if only for a a few days. This time out, however, music's still very much part of the gameplan. "I'm definitely going to make music there," said Jens.

"But it feels like I've finished something here now with this album. I really wanted this record to go to new places with new people and other people than me," Jens added, echoing a sentiment he recently expressed on his blog. "But in the end, I really failed...in the end, the whole record stayed within the thirty square meters of my apartment. So, I was kind of disappointed about that-- but it turned out great somehow. And I think the work that I have to do now... I want the [next] record to reach new people and new places."

Jens cited Paul Simon's 1986 milestone Graceland as an example of a record that achieves this worldly aim. "I love Graceland for the way that it travels-- I think it starts in South Africa and moves through Africa, and in the end it goes back home. And it goes down to Louisiana and then from there to places like L.A. with Los Lobos, and it sort of ties it together somehow. [Night Falls] doesn't go anywhere until the last song, and it just goes out to a drive-in out in the country."

So what kept Jens and Night Falls confined to the homefront? "I think it was just a feeling I got after a while. There was something about this place, that the songs ended up sounding special in a way. I wanted to make it perfect, to finish what I started. So it was a good thing in the end."

Jens likened his situation to that of French author/soldier Xavier de Maistre, who penned the 1794 essay Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre (Journey Around My Room). "I haven't read it myself but I think it's amazing. It's about a young man who's imprisoned in his own home, and he wrote this parody of travel stories-- you know, back in the 18th century when everyone wrote about their journeys to China and the East and West. So he wrote about traveling around in his living room. I think it's amazing. And then he wrote a sequel, A Nocturnal Journey Around My Room (Expedition nocturne de ma chambre, published in 1825 --ed.]. It was like the exact same thing except it was at night.

"I have to recommend it even though I haven't read it. I'm going to read it though."

So what's with the holy haircut on the cover of Night Falls Over Kortedala? "I guess it's a dream picture," Jens offered. "And there's a song about my ex-hairdresser on the album ['Shirin'], but I wanted something like that because I always have that look on my face when I get my hair cut... it's almost like a religious experience."

As for Shirin herself, "I never got the full story, but I think she came here from Iraq when the war started. I don't know if she was here legally or not. She had this salon in an apartment here, and I think it was kind of off-the-record. It was called Kortedala Beauty Center [after which Jens named his home studio --ed.]. She didn't speak Swedish at all or English-- I just came in, showed her my passport picture and how I looked, and she gave me my favorite haircut."

The two were never able to communicate with words, however. "Her mom was there and she spoke a little bit of English, and she told me some stories, but one day they were just gone. I hope they're okay."

Before Jens checks out of Kortedala, he intends to play a special valedictory gig. "I'm moving out of this apartment, and I'm going to do a little farewell concert when everything's moved out of here, with the acoustics and everything-- there just seems to be something about the acoustics of these walls, old, big walls. Because the album is very dressed up-- it's very Marie Antoinette in a way, very dressed up and orchestrated-- and I wanted to give another perspective to it. So I'm just going to record a couple of those songs. It's like a little live concert by myself." Those recordings will likely turn up on a bonus CD set to accompany pre-orders of Night Falls.

Frequent readers of Jens' blog may have encountered a somewhat embittered recent entry regarding securing the rights for the samples on the new record-- in which Jens expressed disappointment toward his U.S. label-- followed a few days later by a reconciliation. "I can't really talk about it that much," Jens explained, "but let's just say it worked out. I was able to replace one sample that was extremely expensive; it was like the one bad guy. And I had a guy who played with Steely Dan play it, and it came out exactly the way it sounded on the sample."

Wait a minute...Steely Dan?? "Yeah, Mike Leonhart. He plays trumpet. He's very professional; he was a really, really nice guy and he did a great job. And he took me to a Steely Dan show just a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty funny actually. I haven't listened to them before, I really was just standing there going, hmmm, they're very, very smooth."

As previously reported, Jens did do some recording with Sarah Assbring (aka El Perro Del Mar), but little from those sessions wound up on the final version of Night Falls. "I recorded a lot with her," explained Jens, "but in the end I realized it wasn't what I was looking for. The quality of having her just stand behind me sipping on a cup of tea, it was [reassuring]. But I wasn't ready to let go of the controls at that point." Sarah does provide some harmony vocals on the new record, as does similarly tall/sad/Swedish songstress Frida Hyvönen.

Indeed, an awful lot of music that comes from Jens' home country might perceived as melancholy. But Lekman doesn't really see it as a trend. "I definitely don't think that me and my friends are a bunch of depressed people. But... I guess there are tendencies. But I'm not going to go into the lack of sunlight and all that crap, you know? Me and my friends are a bunch of happy idiots!"

Folks who check out Jens on his fall tour (dates recapped below) can expect "almost the same band" as the one that turned heads at the 2006 Pitchfork Music Festival. "We have some strings this time. We've been mixing together some songs in order to make samples and stuff like that, so we have a guy with record players and a laptop. He's an artist that I like from Gothenburg, Viktor Sjöberg. He's [also] a closing band or an after-band-- I don't know if you have a term for that." Jens hopes Viktor's post-headline sets will encourage showgoers to hang around afterwards and mingle a bit.

Essentially, it's one adventure after another for Jens. "I think the idea that the world has become smaller because of communication technology is just bullshit," he concluded. "I think it's just as beautiful and glorious as it always was."

Live Lekman:

08-11 Malmö, Sweden - På Besök *^
08-13 Gothenburg, Sweden - Cafe Publik *
08-14 Varberg, Sweden - Majas (solo show also) *
08-17 Stockholm, Sweden - Tradgarden *^
08-18 Aarhus, Denmark - Pop Revo 07
08-20 Stockholm, Sweden - Stockholmsterassen !
08-24 Reykjavik, Iceland - Reyfi Festival
09-06 Uppsala, Sweden - Konsert & Kongress
09-14 Bergen, Norway - Phonofestivalen
09-15 Olso, Norway - John Dee
09-16 Salisbury, England - End of the Road Festival
10-23 Bloomington, IN - Jake's #
10-25 Washington, DC - Black Cat #
10-26 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church #
10-27 New York, NY - Webster Hall #
10-29 Boston, MA - Paradise #
11-01 Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom #
11-02 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium #
11-03 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club #
11-06 Seattle, WA - Nectar #
11-07 Portland, OR - Someday Lounge #
11-09 San Francisco, CA - Bimbo's 365 Club #
11-10 West Hollywood, CA - Troubadour #

* Jens performing with Guy Blackman and Sly Hats
^ DJ set
! with Joel Gibb, Verity Susman
# with Viktor Sjöberg (closing set)