I’ve been a fan of Jens Lekman from the moment he walked from one end of The Schooner, through the audience, playing ukulele, onto the stage. He had me with his awkward story-telling lyrics and moments of gorgeous honesty. There’s a whimsical charm that make you just wish he was your boyfriend, although I suspect hearing your most recent lovers quarrel being recounted in quirky song form on an album would soon become problematic. Worse than over-sharing on Facebook.
The story goes that this record, Jens’ third long-player, is a break-up record and seemingly his wry sense of humour has taken a turn for the darker. To counter-point this, to my ears, at least, he’s turned the sonic twee up up further than usual (which is, in itself no mean feat!). I confess to some discomfort in listening to this record – perhaps the scorned heart is edging a little too close to misogyny for comfort, or perhaps the twee-squared stylings are going too far.
Perhaps a little from column A; a little from column B.
Review by Andrew Tidball
RATING : PRETTY GOOD
Cheese on Toast is phasing in a new album ratings system. I have always struggled with a numerical scale; it feels so finite and arbitrary. So the new scale looks like this :
FREAKIN’ AWESOME / JUST AWESOME / REALLY GREAT / GREAT / GOOD / PRETTY COOL / NOT BAD / COULD BE BETTER / PRETTY BAD, ACTUALLY / NOT RECOMMENDED FOR EARS
