On my very first day of college, a future friend eyed me up and down as we were walking to our first orientation session and said, "Did you see Jens Lekman at Pitchfork Music Festival this summer?" I don’t know if I’d mentioned that I was from Chicago; I definitely hadn’t mentioned the festival. When I told him that yes, I had, how had he known, he said, "I just had a feeling."
To this day, I’ve never asked what he meant by that. But nearly eight years later to the day, I’m still a Jens Lekman fan, and was thrilled when he released a mixtape called WWJD on Tuesday. Lekman has shared mixtapes before, but this was the first to feature original songs—good ones, too. "What’s That Perfume That You Wear?" has a melancholy title, but after a gimme of an opening lyric ("What’s that perfume that you wear?/ It brings me back somewhere") it kicks into Balearic boogie, steel drums leading the way like Lekman is doing his best impersonation of his Swedish countrymen, the Knife, circa Silent Shout. "I Remember" is a slinky slice of Wes Anderson-appropriate pop that sounds inspired by a writing exercise Lekman conducted with a songwriting class, in which every lyric must begin with “I remember.” On his website, Lekman described it as a very basic exercise in “finding a narrative within fragments not necessary linked by a chronological order or storyline. ‘I Remember’ seems to work best and several very personal and touching lyrics are written.”
It’s the first song, “WWJD”, that’s the most affecting. He explained the concept in a statement announcing the mixtape:
While travelling through midwest America some time ago I stopped at a gas station and bought a WWJD bracelet for $1.99 and insisted that it stood for ‘What Would Jens Do?’. I would look at it when I felt indecisive, think about what Jens really would do and then do the opposite of that. I thought that would be a good way to find some new paths in life, and to get away from the paths I kept taking that didn’t lead me anywhere good.
Lekman’s statement was characteristically thoughtful, but it struck me as deeper than a typical sentiment. Think about how incredibly difficult it would be, in your day to day life, to consciously suspend your immediate reaction to anything and decide, "No, I’m going to do the other thing." There’s an episode of "Seinfeld" where George Costanza decides he’s sick of being regular George, and does exactly that. The joke is that he has one of the best days of his life. Lekman plays it a little straighter, singing about noticing "every mistake you’ve made" and "every tear rolling down your face." Eventually, he lapses to gentle goofiness when he says the process is like a good ole friend who "taps you on the shoulder saying ‘don’t do that again.’"
That mix of fatalistic romanticism and pinpoint dryness makes it easy to see him as a type of millennial Morrissey, though without any of the flagellistic self-righteousness. The charming awkwardness of "A Postcard to Nina" sold the orchestral grandeur of "And I Remember Every Kiss", the ponderous solitude of "Black Cab". But Lekman hasn’t been content to stay the same type of sad boy; he’s grown over the years, along with the "Jens" who’s often the hero of his songs. The thirst for kisses that only set him on fire has given way to the tender acceptance that, yes, some things are bigger than love. That you can spend your life inside the pain of love formed and dissipated, and at least come away with the understanding of what that adds up to.
He’s more mature, and perhaps more intuitive about the artist he wants to be. I loved 2012’s I Know What Love Isn’t, but it didn’t quite set the world on fire. Hence the mixtape instead of the album, a format he’s previously expressed disdain for. Since nothing says "let’s be close" like a mixtape, why not release one and show the songs and associated feelings that went into such inspired compositions? Here, we’ve got the roots reggae of Bunny Maloney’s "Baby I've Been Missing You", the string-laden sexiness of Jhené Aiko’s "Stranger", the nighttime frolic of Ralph MacDonald’s "The Path". Suddenly, it makes sense to hear Lekman, who’s always been a softly arranged singer-songwriter, working with more playful sounds. It swirls together into one cohesive experience as intimate as writing a postcard, as pleasant as receiving one. It’s as though Jens the artist asked what Jens the product would do—and then, he did the opposite.