Really? REally??!
What are the Fiery Furnaces doing out charting Jens Lekman on our Topless 40?

the end.

oh, and here is an interview with Jens taken on his latest show in Austin on November 14th, 2007.

Photo courtesy of Amarah and her Polaroid camera.


Jens Lekman Interview
Nov. 14th 2007
I sat in the empty Parish room, which was hardly a room at all but more like a box, with dark wooden planks and glowing paper lantern pearls strung up from the ceiling encircling one immaculate diamond of a disco ball. The sound of idle prattle juxtaposed against the sweetest of honeydew voices would soon fill the empty space in a few short hours. However, for now, sound check.

Finally, all levels were set and I sheepishly walked up to the pale, and rather thin, Swedish pop star, soon to be Aussie-fied, Jens Lekman. I had only corresponded with Jens through Internet before and he, with more than a century's worth of song carried in his heart daily, remembered me.

Unfortunately, I had to share my interview with none other than those pesky persons from down stairs, a.k.a. the Daily Texan, whose nifty Rolodex and hefty budget never fails…I’ll stick to my own guerilla tactics and keep my dignity, thanks. I’ll try to keep their side out of this publication.

Call Letter: How did you spend Halloween? Did you dress up?
Jens: I kind of prefer All Hallows Eve to Halloween. We did dress up every night as traditional Swedish farmers, but I do prefer All Hallows Eve where you celebrate by lighting candles on graves.

CL: Oh, kind of like Dia de Los Muertos?
Jens: Yeah, like that. What were you?

CL: (we really don’t need to get into that…) So, I read in an interview that you worked at an actual bingo hall for all two days and had a horrible time, yet you wrote an upbeat “Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo.”

Jens: Yes but those are two different things. In Sweden everything revolves around bingo, especially in Gothenburg, there are many bingo halls, even a TV show about bingo. In the countryside it’s a different type of bingo, it’s the drive in bingo and I like that, but it’s becoming more rare.

CL: Almost a novelty, similar to the old drive-in movie theatres in the states. Speaking of movies, your claim to fame was a case of mistaken identity (the Sweds thought he went by Rocky Dennis of “Mask” fame and picked up on Jens and just kept spinning); do you think things would be different if it wasn’t for that mistake?

Jens: I don’t know about that, actually…I think with the whole Internet revolution I still would have been heard.

CL: Well, thank goodness you are talented; any other would have possibly been a “flash in the pan.”
Jens: I wasn’t that talented back then, but I like to think that I’ve gotten better, but at the beginning I guess it was more luck.

CL: How did you manage to make such a happy, upbeat album “Night Falls Over Kortedala,” after what seemed to be a not so pleasant situation there? What happened?
Jens: I stopped going out for sometime and would take long walks at night. That’s when things started happening, I got mugged, and then I stopped going out entirely for a while. I always wanted Korteldala to be this place of history and beauty and when I moved there it turned out to be a suburb asleep. I grew up on Hammerhill, the place that I sing about, and it was sort of poor and the people who grew up there grew up together and formed some kind of community. In Korteldala there was no community, no one gives a shit about each other there.

CL: Back to the album, “A Post Card to Nina,” is that a true story?
Jens: Yes, it’s a true story.
CL: When I heard it live at Pitchfork Festival in 2006 I laughed out loud, which is rare at a concert. The version on the album is different from the early copy I got on the Internet and your live performance. I think I had heard a Buffalo ’66 (Gallo, 1998) reference in Chicago…why did you change it? Are they going to sue you?

Jens: (chuckled) No. That is what actually went through my head when I was there, I though of that movie, but I don’t like to leave in too many references to other things. I can’t really take credit for writing that song, and I only take credit for the last lines in the song. When I came to the last lines of the song, I felt it was getting a bit too silly, almost, and I wanted to wrap it up with some kind of dignity.

(By the way, I love the way he says “other,” “father,” and anything ending with an er…its adorable)

CL: When you write songs, do you write of things that you wish or do you write about things solely based on your experience?
Jens: I write music prophetically a lot of the times and want them to happen. So it’s not like filling the gaps, instead, I make the gaps happen.

CL: How has the tour been? Have you checked-in at any five star hotels?
Jens: I really don’t make that much money from touring. I just check into Best Westerns, we sleep five to a bed, and then go to perform another show, but the tour has been great.

CL: And that was with a full band? Your show is booked as a solo show here in Austin, why not bring the band?
Jens: Every show that I did with the band I lost money, so at some point I couldn’t afford it for the South.
CL: What do you think of the South?
Jens: I’ve always had a good time here, all the shows have been more exotic, well, maybe not at Emo’s, Once we went to Odessa and played in a trailer where there was a woman with an eye patch and a real parrot on her shoulder at the door, that kind of experience I like.
CL: Yeah, that’s a really unique experience.
Jens: And that only happens down here.

CL: You’re new album, or, well, it’s not really an album; it’s more like the last release which was a compilation...
Jens: This one feels more like an album because I had my friends pick out the songs. I gave them about 30 songs and they would call me up in the middle of the night and tell me what they liked, and then I had a track list.

CL: (I proceeded by asking what his favorite musical was and some how we got to talking about comedy).
Jens: When I was doing the last US tour at some point I started telling more jokes instead of playing songs. I was out playing with Frida Hyvonen and she came up to me and said, “I really like the jokes, but you need to decide if you want to tell jokes or if you want to sing.”
CL: Did the jokes go over well?
Jens: Not really…
CL: (I giggled a bit) Aww, I thought that they would at least humor you…oh, well. So, you are pretty famous in Sweden, do you hope to rise to fame in America?
Jens: What I’ve learned is that you can tour as much as you can, but then you get to a point where you would really have to sell yourself, and I would never do that. And I don’t have anything against some artists who can sell their music to be used in a commercial.
CL: For example Jose Gonzalez?
Jens: Cause his music fits. Sometimes I’ll get an offer and they’re like, “yeah, we want to use your music but could you change the lyrics so it fits our product.”

CL: But you did have commercial success didn’t you? With a jingle formed from “A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammerhill” for Maytag or something?
Jens: Oh, yeah, it was LG. They wanted to use my song.

CL: So was that the most money you had ever made in your music career?
Jens: Well, they didn’t buy it from me. They didn’t like my version and they hired a college band to remake it and didn’t pay me anything. They could have at least sent me a washing machine.

And finally, after about half an hour of half serious half giggling conversation, our Swedish gem went out into the night to visit his friends from “Down Under” at Emo’s.
We politely said our adieus and he later performed, loop pedal laden, in a gray blazer ornate with a colorful brooch of some sort of exotic bird to keep over his left breast. It was, to say the very least, fantastic.