Sunday, February 10, 2008

After months of playing "The Opposite of Hallelujah" at least twice a week, I'm officially sorry I underrated Jens Lekman's Night Falls Over Kortedala. Cavils about his flat, doleful voice aside, I admire how the arrangements (those strings!) consistently undercut the bathos; in a few cases, they inflate the bathos, waiting for a well-timed lyric here or backup singer there, in a thrilling reminder that, at this stage in his career, Lekman understands self-parody better than Morrissey did.

3 comments:

M said...

For me it's "A Postcard to Nina" and especially whatever track 11 is called--the two-minute coda is so casually the most ambitious and successful orchestral-pop thing I've heard in eons.

kiss out the jams said...

Hey, nice!

Ally Brown said...

I'm still gutted he never made our 50. HOW COULD IT NOT EVEN MAKE THE 50!?