Jens Lekman - The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom

Jens Lekman - The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom

Name: Jens Lekman - The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom
Brand: Secretly Canadian
SKU: SC388LP-C1
Price: 250.0 HKD
Availability: InStock

Genre: INDIE ROCK / POP / FOLK

Format: 2LP "Baby Pink" Colored Limited Edition

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2LP "Baby Pink" Colored Limited Edition
Release Date: 3/6/2022
Label: Secretly Canadian

2CD Edition
Release Date: 3/6/2022
Label: Secretly Canadian

All my friends were playing in these bass-guitar-drum bands,” speaks Jens Lekman, casting his mind back over twenty years to his first rudimentary experiments with sampling using his father’s old cassette recorder, and an instinct to create music that would set him far apart from his Swedish pop peers. “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 fleamarket vinyl records with by turns burningly romantic and mordantly funny true-life tales from the sleepy-shadowy suburbs of Gothenburg – Lekman’s early songs come from a different time, a different 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 album proper, 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, like Oh You’re So Silent Jens, it no longer exists in its original form.

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.

On The Cherry Trees, two of Lekman’s best-loved early breakout singles are completely reimagined – ‘Maple Leaves’ as a tender ballad burnished with warm strings; tragi-comic illegal taxi ride to oblivion ‘Black Cab’ in two different versions, a handsome full band pop song and a gentle acoustic lullaby. The Linden Trees repackages all the true-life tales, magic, and mystery of Night Falls for a new age, yet in wholly familiar form, from the joyous ‘The Opposite of Hallelujah’ to hilariously uplifting missive ‘A Postcard to Nina’ and open-hearted love-song ‘Your Arms Around Me’.

Taken together, the new albums form a sort of belated farewell to Lekman’s formative days as a bedroom Scott Walker, panning for sample gold in stacks of vintage vinyl. Albeit not a farewell to the original albums themselves, which will live on in fans’ record collections, and perhaps illicit corners of the internet. Spread to the wind.

“I feel like these new records are like portals that can lead you to the old records if you want,” Lekman reflects. “I think that they can lead you to another time and a place, where you could work with music in a different way.”

2LP "Baby Pink" Colored Limited Edition 2CD Edition

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)

1. November 27, 2002 01:07
2. At The Dept. Of Forgotten Songs 01:32
3. Maple Leaves 04:00
4. Sky Phenomenon 04:34
5. Pocketful Of Money 04:20
6. Black Cab 04:38
7. Someone To Share My Life With 03:30
8. December 19, 2002 00:56
9. Rocky Dennis' Farewell Song To The Blind 05:17
10. Rocky Dennis In Heaven 01:01
11. Jens Lekman's Farewell Song To Rocky Dennis 03:53
12. Julie (RMX) 02:53
13. April 23, 2003 01:00
14. I Saw Her In The Anti-War Demonstration 03:11
15. A Sweet Summer's Night On Hammer Hill 03:27
16. A Man Walks Into A Bar 04:20
17. Another Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill 03:13
18. F-Word 04:28
19. The Wrong Hands 04:21
20. Jun e 1, 2003 00:48
21. Eureka 03:09
22. The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom 04:20
23. Black Cab (Acoustic) 04:39