JENS LEKMAN - Oh You’re So Silent Jens

Spring is coming, and this hefty Lekman compilation is the perfect soundtrack for it. Maybe it's because listening to him makes you feel in love even, or especially, when you're not; maybe it's because tracks like "Julie" were already familiar to us, and we find them again among these "Forgotten Songs", sounding like memories sweetened by the hope of something better. Perhaps the good season really is on its way. It's certainly arrived a good while ago for our Jens, who manages to blend old glories and glorious-but-barely-known tracks to perfection.

After all, "At The Dept. Of Forgotten Songs" is an intro that announces a clean-up among old boxes of forgotten songs: let's put the blankets away, throw out the stale things we no longer need, keep the ones that still make us dream, and air out the room before settling back in. The three unreleased tracks — besides the intro, there's "F-Word" and "Wrong Hands" — accompany this delicate, sweet, and at times comic collection ("You don't know anything/ so don't ask me questions!"). And so here's a bit of low-fi and a (fair) amount of little bells, and, like magic, we find ourselves dancing in the living room.

Talking about Lekman, the Smiths and especially Morrissey always come up, and in our view, it's inevitable. We're not crying miracle, mind you, but the mood created by "Oh You're So Silent Jens" (how emo is that title?) is a bit like that of the teenage protagonist of "Fucking Åmål", who is, in fact, Swedish, and, in fact, a Morrissey fan. This is a record that could speak to teenagers, with its mix of sweetness, grass-stained shoes and irony ("Oh no God damn'/ God damn'/ I lost the last train/ I wanna sleep in my bed!").

There's no shortage of the Morrissey-esque ballad either, like "Someone To Share My Life With" ("I just want someone to share my life with/ and you could be that someone"). The same atmosphere of pure poetry and pastel colours returns if you listen to the three beautiful songs dedicated to Rocky Dennis, the protagonist of "The Mask", identified with Lekman purely by mistake, and who, at the time the Ep came out, became almost a pseudonym of his. "Rocky Dennis' Farewell Song" opens with a Four Tet-style glitch, with a voice whispering in baritone from the background. A complete and enjoyable track, as well as beautifully put together.

Overall, the whole record shows a completeness and a range of facets that can all be traced back to Lekman's spirit and his warm, almost homemade recordings. It's the best record for those who don't know him yet, and certainly the best one to get a sense of who he is. Lekman's sensibility is entirely feminine, as he often chooses women to accompany him on tour. His sound is entirely Swedish, full of descriptions and portraits of landscapes with hazy sunsets and dense woods. To us it sounds exotic, the strings and woodwinds and little bells and crickets and cicadas, and we keep listening to it because we're happy, or we're happy and so we listen to it — either way, we've discovered that the Smiths and Belle And Sebastian coexist quite easily, you just need to add a pinch of irony to so much sweetness (which otherwise, let's be honest, would put us at serious risk of diabetes). Well done Jens, we liked you all over again.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

30/04/2026