Jens Lekman- Night Falls Over Kortedala

older stuff is a little more bedroom-y and based way more on guitar than his newer songs. but if you're digging the real orchestral feel of night falls, there are some songs on the compilation (you're so silent jens) that kind of indulge his more schmaltzy side, but they sound kind of canned (i'm assuming bcuz of budget reasons) (i'm talking about a song like "maple leaves" which is still beautiful) compared to the way a lot of the sounds on night falls really blossom.

really otm about "a postcard to nina" and "kanske", which are probably my two fav songs on the album. i would throw "friday night at the drive in bingo" in there too in terms of those three having a looser, more clattering feel. he (intentionally, i'm sure) nearly stumbles over the rapid end of "friday night" like he does on "a postcard to nina".

I'm also liking his lyrical persona a lot more than I expected to. "Kanske" is a good example--the way the first verse seems daft and then he turns the corner and explains it away as date jitters. That kind of thing can be really mawkish (and my sense that Lenkman did that was a lot of why I avoided him before), but his matter-of-factness helps its charm enormously. (Ditto his semi-deadpan in "Nina": "Oh! God! Jesus Christ!"

it's pretty plainly obvious why ppl are turned off by his lyrics, but there's a lot of understood humor in his whole persona that really draws me in (maybe thats just something i identify with), be it with just a lyric like "the dreamer just make believe/ but i thought she said maple leaves" or a whole verse like "i picked up a seashell/l to illustrate my homelessness/ but a crab crawled out of it/ making it useless". he very clearly magnifies mini-heartbreaks and mini-triumphs, but shrugs both off with a kind of aw-shucksness that i think is pretty relatable.

Going to see this fella tonight in Kilburn.

I saved "The Opposite of Hallelujah" and a couple of others, but his voice isn't up to his melodies.

Techically, I agree with Alfred, but I've grew to adore the voice, even at its most foghorny (like the opening cut); I prefer him as a singer to Merritt (an obvious forebear tonally), or at least on this album. I'm surprised how much I really like it; it's jumped onto my Top 10 list, though I may change its position again before my vote goes in.

Agreed that his voice isn't all that, but it's not terrible, and he has a total mastery of what he's trying to do with his songs, structurally, the stories he wants to tell.

I wasn't a huge fan before this album, but "night falls" is top class.

I have totally mixed feelings about stuff like this. I've never heard earlier Jens and while he's definitely doing some good stuff I don't know how long this record will stay with me. He's clearly at his best when he's telling a story so the middle portion of the record ("eternity," "if I could cry," that stuff) is a complete blur. I'm a bit surprised to see some praise on this thread for the production, which to me is totally forgettable. He's getting by on lyrics and melodies (I enjoy his voice too, I must admit). Tunes like "Nina" and "Drive-in Bingo" will be hard to forget, but then I think things like "When the hell was the last time I listened to 69 Love Songs," or for that matter any such exercise in classicism? It's such a fleeting pleasure for me.

Not sure there's anything wrong with a fleeting pleasure. there will be more than enough music next year. (not an entirely facetious point either. I really try not to penalize records that I suspect won't age well, because who knows?)

also, i should have said "(the tracks i've heard from) night falls (are) top class." because i really only have about 6 of them.

the Merritt comparison's a good one, and I need to think about it some more – how Lenkman's more "traditional" arrangements compensate for his vocal limitations versus Merritt's synthezied ones.

Billy, I hear you that there's nothing wrong with fleeting pleasure, but it's still tough to make that comparison when there are records I've had for years that I still really enjoy digging out.

There are also enjoyable records that you don't unearth for years.

agreed. i just try to remind myself that there's no way in advance of knowing which ones are going to be those go-to records, that's all.

x-post

i love this album so much

One of my favourite albums of all time.

yup, still fresh and still amazing

he is doing some release a song-a-week project this year I think?? anyone keeping up w/ that?

i have, both songs that have come out so far have been very entertaining and enjoyable

know nothing of song a week project. this album is gorgeous though.

what's broken can always be fixed / what's fixed will always be broken

there's definitely a magnetic fields or cole porter element to the light verse of the lyrics, which can go from whimsical to arresting at the turn of a phrase. i wish more songwriters could do this effectively.

The way he sings that line breaks my heart. Just reading the lyrics make me want to put it on repeat for the rest of the night.

aw young earnest j0rdan

I like a lot more of this album than I remembered, also I am in a more appropriate headspace for Jens these days. still can't get past the intro of "it was a strange time in my life" though

I was listening to some early Scott Walker the other day and it reminded me of the lead track on this.

reminder abt all these, i havent kept up but dipped in and out & listening to some now

https://soundcloud.com/jens-lekman

.@JensLekman's ‘Night Falls Over Kortedala’ is leaving this life and heading into eternity. Purchase the record, download the digital album, & stream it for the last time by March 21st

Sharing your condolences in the YouTube chat on March 21st at 11am EST pic.twitter.com/jQNraLtkZ1

— Secretly Canadian (@secretlycndian) March 15, 2022

what??? did he finally get sued over a sample or something because removing the album from sale completely is bizarre & extreme without any explanation

And from streaming too! This is really bizarre.

The really short, less than a week, notice makes me think it is sample based, in reaction to a threatened lawsuit or cease and desist, or something.

Great album though, a shame to see it lost to history.

Huh...if it's a sample, why not just remove that one track? Unless it says a "that compromises the integrity of the album, fuck it, take the whole thing down" situation.

I have a complicated relationship to the past. Everyone who writes and has had some form of success does. When my album Oh You’re So Silent Jens was taken down ten years ago due to sample issues, I almost felt a relief. The past had become too heavy. It's hard to explain but it used to bother me when someone said they liked something I’d done in the past. It was like... Imagine you’re 40, like me, and someone said ”I saw a photo of you when you were 21, you looked really good back then”. That's a nice thing to say but it can also unintentionally translate to ”you don’t look that good anymore”. And it feels the same way with a song, especially if you’re still trying to write new songs. So the album was gone and I thought that would make me feel better but the effect was much more extreme than I thought. Because of streaming and the way we've been listening to music the last ten years it was like the album had never existed. For any new listener that album is not even a gap in the record collection. It has no absence, there's no void, unless you know exactly where it was supposed to have been. And over time these old songs have become like new songs. Several times after playing Black Cab live, a young person has come up and said ”I liked that new song you played called Black Cab, when is that coming out?”.
So during this pandemic I worked on restoring a lot of my old recordings from this era to be able to re-release them. Some songs had to be re-recorded from scratch as I’d recorded over the original tapes. Others could be remixed or left as they were. Unreleased demos were dug up and finished. If I was Bartlebooth I guess I would be in the jigsaw puzzle phase. It’s been fascinating, like I’ve had a compassionate dialogue between my current self and my 21 year old self. I think I look a lot better today than when I was 21 but I could write some pretty good tunes back then. It’s made me like myself more. It’s made me understand where I am. To know where you are you need to know where you came from.
Sometimes I’ve fantasized about including a clause in my will about having all traces of myself erased once I’m dead. Placing my songs in a detergent solution and leaving nothing but white sheets behind. But that’s nonsense, I know. Pure narcissism in disguise. What I leave to the world belongs to the world. I donate it to you like I donate my body to science. I will from now on carry a donor card in my wallet that says ”After my death - any song I’ve ever written and anything I’ve ever posted on my blog - may be used for the benefit of others. Take this old flesh, learn something from it. Carve in it. Tear it to pieces. Delete it if you want or frame it in a museum. Read my growth rings like a tree, my musical calcifications. Laugh with me and laugh at me. I was a human. No more, no less."

https://www.jenslekman.com/records/smalltalk.htm

Huh. Not going to begrudge him his wishes, but I wish his new version could coexist with the original, not replace it.

Night Falls Over Kortedala (Taylor's Version)

there's a big difference between re-recording & re-releasing oh you're so silent jens, which was already unavailable, and removing night falls over kortedala from sale & streaming to do the same (if that is indeed what's happening, there's no confirmation there)

Yeah, I missed that he was talking about re-recording Silent there. Maybe this is a hint that he is planning to do the same for Night Falls?

I honestly hadn't realized Silent was gone either though.

looking forward to the newly finished unreleased demos from the vault though

but it's a bit disappointing because this likely means there's not anything properly new on the way anytime soon and he works at such a glacial pace

I've certainly noticed the absence of Silent from streaming because every year or so I want to foist "Maple Leaves" on people. (Not sure how much mileage I'd get out of a non-infringing rearrangement of that sampletastic thing, come to think of it. Maybe I'll find out.)

god i love this album. spun it for the first time in a while last night and had somehow forgotten how big the backbeat was on some of these tracks–"danceable" isn't the first word i think of when i think of jens, but it certainly fits here, especially on some of those tracks on the album's second half.

love the way he plays with tempo on the sped-up sections of "hallelujah" and "drive-in bingo" (which has always been my personal favorite).

secretly is streaming the album live right now (for the last time????): youtube.com/watch?v=jtHvuY-wXys

Guess I should have taken this seriously and tried to buy an LP. I see they're all sold out and the only one for sale on discogs is $275? It's still on spotify but I'm assuming that won't last long.

Anyone selling on discogs right now is specifically trying to profit off of this news.

btw night falls over kortedala still lives online in unlisted form at that link i shared above (until they wise up and take it down)

Been removed from his Bandcamp page but still shows as a purchase in my app/feed, so there's that...

When I saw this news I thought “good thing I got it on vinyl” but I was wrong! I was thinking of the compilation (which I adore)

I love him for the casual Life a Users Manual reference.

wait is he really re-recording oh you're so silent jens...

it's made pretty clear in his blog post linked above, says he wants to re-release it but has to avoid the sample issues that have kept it unavailable for the past decade & has recorded over some of the original tapes so some of it needs to be re-recorded from scratch

I was under the impression that Jens had already re-recorded various samples after their initial release... it could be my imagination but I thought that "Black Cab" in its original pre-Oh You're So Silent Jens form had a full-tilt Left Banke sample

I wish he could just get those samples cleared! The re-interpretative quality of those early songs was so much a part of the enjoyment

you're not wrong about "black cab" and i think "maple leaves," both of which had a few alternate versions with slightly-altered instrumentals

there were two different versions of "maple leaves" on oh you're so silent jens with some slightly different samples iirc, not sure if there were any others out there

i think the left banke sample is still there in the version of "black cab" on the album too

no idea which samples were at fault for the album getting taken down either