Jens Lekman Update | UPDATE

Back in December, I posted about the Swedish King of Pop, Jens Lekman, leaving the music business for a while. Well, guess what? He's back, baby!

I didn't think his sabatical would last forever but I certainly thought it would last longer than a month. That's what you get for hanging on his every word. From now on, I'll stick him in the "moody high drama guy" category and not react too strongly to his statements.

Despite claiming to have been burned out from playing 198 shows in two years, he's back on the road. According to his blog, smalltalk, and Yankunian's comments in a post from last week, Lekman is touring the UK and doing one-stop shows in Paris and Gothenburg this month. In March, he's going to Australia to play some festivals.

I'm guessing the guy has a love/hate relationship with touring. It's just odd to book a bunch of shows just a month about complaining publicly about the misery of touring.

In addition to touring, last week, Lekman debuted a short film at the Gothenburg Filmfestival called Kullaberg. It's not entirely clear what the film/video is but it seems to be Lekman performing songs by himself deep in the woods of Kullaberg. The trailer for it doesn't offer much. It's basically Lekman walking through the woods with the sounds of his ukelele and the ocean in the background. At this time, there doesn't appear to be any plans to release the film on DVD but then again...he said he was done with touring for a long time also.

Lekman also popped up on NPR last month where he gave an interview to Scott Simon. Somehow, Simon fails to ever ask him about his short-lived hiatus. Lekman brings it up briefly but Simon largely glances over it. But he did manage to ask Lekman about being voted one of the sexiest men in Sweden and how to pronounce Gothenberg. Oy vey! Having mocked it, the interview does show a bit of Lekman's humor and charm.

Lastly, Lekman stuck a present on his site for his fans. He posted the mp3 files for all of the songs from his last three tour-only limited edition EPs. As with a lot of EPs, the songs are hit-and-miss. However, the ones I linked to below are pretty good; particularly "I Don't Know If She's Worth 900 KR". Thanks to Chad for tipping me off to the page with the presents.

That's a lot of activity for a guy that was done with music in November. Regardless, I'm glad he's back and enthusiastic about making music again.

UPDATE: This post wasn't even up for 12 hours before Chad pointed out that Pitchfork dropped a lengthy interview with Jens on us today. In perfect contrast to the NPR interview, Ryan Schreiber immediately dove into the issue of his mini-break from music. I guess it just took a few days of working in a bingo hall to make Lekman realize the upside of being a beloved musician.

Jens Lekman | I Don't Know If She's Worth 900 KR
Jens Lekman | Run Away With Me
Jens Lekman | REC (the song doesn't kick-in until the 0:37 mark)
Jens Lekman | Hultsfred 98 (the song doesn't kick in until a little after the one minute mark)
Jens Lekman | Jag tyckte hon sa Lönnlöv (Swedish version of "Maple Leaves")