Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007)

I’ve always been torn over Jens Lekman’s befuddled loser shtick – the awkwardness, the self-deprecating humor, the off-kilter lyrics draped in canned horns and strings. Beyond his albums, which have ranged between flashes of brilliance and musty excursions sagging with filler, I have real doubts about the persona itself, which can be either subtly infuriating or unwittingly charming. At his best, Lekman is fascinating. At his worst he’s drippy and frustrating, all puppy dog eyes and shuffling feet, a socially stunted twin brother to Sondre Lerche with a sampler and a strange unwillingness to leave his bedroom.

I won’t go as far as to say that Night Falls Over Kortedala has won me over, but it’s a start. Not that much has changed. The good-hearted but socially crippled loser motif remains consistent, but it really clicks here, mostly because the epic bluster of the music seems to be slyly mocking the triteness of the lyrics. With this in mind, the whole album plays out like a half-joke; Lekman sings from the heart and his music reflects it, but his words are so ridiculous (touching on asthma inhalers and Slingo) that his earnestness becomes laughable, and the backing even more so.

The clearest example is “Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig” (Swedish for ‘I Love You’), where backup soul crooners follow Lekman’s stumbling opening about a boy and his pet pig with a rhythm of oohs and ba ba bas. It’s strange and funny and succeeds in making him sound more awkward than any acoustic guitar ever could. The same singing voices appear briefly on “A Postcard to Nina,” where Lekman helps a lesbian friend by posing as her boyfriend during a family dinner, only to find himself pursued by an over-friendly father who he fights off with "out of office e-mail replies."

So Lekman not only has to deal with his own clumsiness and constant rejection from cute girls, but the fact that his own music is against him, a designation that elevates him to the most loveable kind of loser. At times there’s a Chaplinesque humor in the way he's forced to deal with this kind of trouble. This works best on “Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo,” when skipping along to a snappy piano tune, he starts to fall behind and has to sputter to catch up with the track, gaining so much speed that he loses the beat again on the other side.

Moments like this poke fun at the artificiality of the musical backing. It's basically all samples, which puts Lekman in the same line as Girl Talk or The Avalanches in terms of a drag and drop, scrap yard style of recording. But while these bands create palettes that are cold and exact, Lekman’s is more like a painted screen that’s falling down behind him as he tries to sing. His songs are patchwork quilts made from other people’s clothes, but he wears them well, a willing clown that, at least for now, pushes the act just far enough to not grate on our nerves.