Jens Lekman - Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom (Limited Edition Baby Pink Vinyl)

LP

  • $29.99
    Unit price per 


Casting his mind back over twenty years to his first rudimentary experiments with sampling using his father's old cassette recorder, Jens Lekman recalls an instinct to create music that would set him far apart from his Swedish pop peers: "All my friends were playing in these bass-guitar-drum bands," he says. "I'm going to sound like Scott Walker. But I'm going to do it in my bedroom." Works of sweeping, maximalist, orchestral wonder sung in a sumptuous tenor, weaving lifts from obscure flea market vinyl records, telling burningly romantic and mordantly funny true-life tales from the sleepy-shadowy suburbs of Gothenburg, Lekman's early songs come from a different time and place: an era when the internet was young, limitless and disruptive, sample culture was turning music inside out, and anything felt possible. After initially finding an audience through peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Lekman signed to Secretly Canadian Records in 2003, and went on to release a slew of cherished material, including three cult limited-edition EPs - Maple Leaves, Rocky Dennis and Julie - later collected on the 2005 compilation album Oh You're So Silent Jens. His DIY fantasias found their fullest and most celebrated form in 2007 on his second proper album, the exquisite Night Falls Over Kortedala - Lekman's self-professed "dream record." It went to number one in Sweden and was later hailed as one of the 200 best albums of the 2000s by Pitchfork, as well as one of the top 100 albums of the 21st century so far by The Guardian. Now, both Oh You're So Silent Jens and Night Falls Over Kortedala no longer exist in their original forms. Oh You're So Silent Jens enigmatically disappeared in 2011; Night Falls Over Kortedala followed suit in early 2022. Lekman's impulse for giving old music fresh life and context has led him to remake the records under new names, each delicately positioned in dialogue with the past - the same albums, just different. The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom and The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom are a pair of lovingly and painstakingly assembled reduxes, each keeping the same core tracklisting, spirit and source material as the originals, but blending brand new versions of some tracks, in part or in whole, together with many tracks left largely as they were. Both records are fleshed out with rare, previously unreleased, and even previously unfinished old songs, as well as other contemporaneous material such as cassette diaries.

A1 Nov. 27, 2002
A2 At The Dept. Of Forgotten Songs
A3 Maple Leaves
A4 Sky Phenomenon
A5 Pocketful Of Money
A6 Black Cab
B1 Someone To Share My Life With
B2 Dec. 19, 2002
B3 Rocky Dennis Farewell Song To The Blind Girl
B4 Rocky Dennis In Heaven
B5 Jens Lekman's Farewell Song To Rocky Dennis
B6 Julie
C1 April 23, 2003
C2 I Saw Her In The Anti-War Demonstration
C3 A Sweet Summer's Night On Hammer Hill
C4 A Man Walks Into A Bar
C5 Another Sweet Summer's Night On Hammer Hill
C6 F-Word
D1 The Wrong Hands
D2 June 1, 2003
D3 Eureka
D4 The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom
D5 Black Cab (Acoustic Version)