I Know What Love Isn't
'I Know What Love Isn't' came out of a break up which isn't a new story. He fell in love and it didn't work out. It borrows sparingly from the vast and colorful palette of sounds he created on 'Night Falls Over Kortedala'. 'I Know What Love Isn't' has strings but not a string section, an upright piano not grand, a single saxophone, gracenotes from a flute, a lot of tambourine. Combined in exact proportions with Lekman's melancholy abstract lyrics, the songs evoke the classic sound of the Brill Building in it's heyday. Lekman is a storyteller of the highest caliber, letting his delicate vignettes unfold to show the wonder that lies in the mundane. That's what 'I Know What Love Isn't'… is. A collection of songs that grew to a story that had to be told. A story that is not new, but essentially human. The story of the grey areas of love that you have to excavate and explore, using the method of exclusion, to find out what love is.
Because its 10 songs are variations on the single theme of "heartbreak," Jens Leman has said I Know What Love Isn't feels like the first proper album he's made.
Like Morrissey, Stuart Murdoch, and Jonathan Richman before him, Jens Lekman broadcasts such an extreme personality with his songs that it would be easy to write him off as a construct, as if the fey Swede wandered out of a Wes Anderson movie and into a record deal. Yet like those spiritual forebears, Lekman’s persona…
The Swedish singer-songwriter redefines the break-up record with 'I Know What Love Isn't'.
Jens Lekman’s third album begins with a short overture titled “Every Little Hair Knows Your Name,” a scene-setting…
Check out our album review of Artist's I Know What Love Isn't on Rolling Stone.com.
Jens Lekman's third full album, I Know What Love Isn't was recorded over a period of three years in a number of studios on different continents, but sounds like the result of a single focused recording session.
Whether singing over schmaltzy disco beats or lovely strings, Jens Lekman could always be counted on for a good time.
Jens Lekman's trademarked shrugging sadness is all over his third album, and <strong>Kate Mossman</strong> worries the style is overtaking the substance