Label: Secretly Canadian
Released: Nov 22, 2005 |
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There really is a curse of putting out a great album in November/December, you miss out on a lot of top 10 lists, glory, applause, gratification, etc. Similar to putting out a great album in January, the near sightedness of the American Critic Faction strickens your album from existance. So that basically leaves 8 other months to release your album to receive any sort of "listing" acclaim. Jens Lekman probably doesn't care about any of this, after all, he is so very silent.
I'd like to introduce everyone to the production that is going to pretty much take over the singer/songwriter genre over the next year or so. The key word is understated, you can hear the understated production on the excellent Fiest album released this past year, Let it Die, it basically consists of as the name would imply understated drums, hand claps, guitars, and the vocals out front over everything. The instrumentation is present, and often brilliant, but the focus is on the vocals. This is really the antithesis of what we have seen with The Microphones/Mt. Eerie production we have seen in recent years, in which the drums could be described as anything but understated.
Production aside, Jens made himself a smart lyrical album, as singer/songwriter albums should be, on one hand interesting, and thought provoking, and on the other hand moderatly geeky and easy to swallow, such as "I had a friend who was slightly overweight/that means fat ass in the seventh grade" in Another Sweet Summers Night On Hammer Hill. There are many stand out tracks that could swing on to numerous singles blogs, but my favorite would be "Black Cab" where the album gets it's namesake "Oh your so silent Jens/Well maybe I am, maybe I am", which conveys to me at least, the story of a boy who silent, but longs for excitement, singular and solitary excitment, but just doesn't know how to do it on his own and wants to be taken there.
As for this being a winter release, maybe it was on purpose, Jens doesn't need my praise, he doesn't want my praise, and he said everything he had to already. And I thank him for it.
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