7.29.2010
New Music: Jens Lekman – “The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love”
Photo by David Greenwald
“The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love” is one of a handful of new songs Jens Lekman played during his brief, beautiful west coast tour last year and like “New Directions” before it, it’s received a gorgeous string-laden studio treatment. Without an attached album or even single announcement, Jens is simply letting this one run wild into the world, a world whose collapse would be bigger than love. Guy needs to see 2012 (or not). Trade your e-mail to hear it:
Lekman explains it all, charisma rolling off his back in endless Swedish sheets, on his website.
Previously: Au Revoir Simone – “Shadows” (Jens Lekman Remix) | All Lekman Posts
The critics roundly abandoned Rufus Wainwright after Poses, missing the high-water mark of Want One but somewhat rightly maligning his successive releases. All Days Are Nights, the golden-voiced singer-songwriter’s attempt at bombast eschewment, seems to have 
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It bears remembering that the Dirty Projectors made the finest album of last year. Mount Wittenberg Orca, a song cycle initially written for performance at New York’s Housing Works in a benefit concert organized by Stereogum’s Brandon Stosuy, isn’t a proper follow-up — but it is a worthy sequel. The mini-album finds the band diving head-first into the harmonic mazes they explored on 2009′s Bitte Orca, determined to reach the limits of indie rock lung capacity. The music stays spartan, leaving the voices room to shine (or shatter glass) and Bjork bjorks around harmlessly, sounding particularly nice playing call-and-response with the DP’s vowel sound montage on “On and Ever Onward.” Don’t play this one for your cat.
At this point, The Clientele has proven itself the most reliable band in chamber-pop: nearly ever year, like clockwork, the band issues another set of lingering guitar arpeggios, hushed but yearning vocals and daydream philosophizing that you’ll want to clutch to your ears until the London-band issues its next installment. The group’s next outing is the mini-album Minotaur, the follow-up to 2009′s psych-tinged Bonfires On The Heath; it is, as we’ve come to expect, thoroughly excellent — I’ll let the single speak, softly, for itself.
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Naming your band “The Smiles” is pretty much asking for punchlines, but the Los Angeles group”s “Cala Cola” delivers on the nom de plume‘s promise. Jangly, sweet and high-energy in a way that recalls a beach-ready, less Africa/boat shoe-obsessed Vampire Weekend (and Rawkblog recent favorites International Waters), the track offers chill waves the old-fashioned way.
Many-genred folk-rockers Calexico have just released a free, 320kpbs bootleg of a recent concert to celebrate their latest tour. Get it, and the dates, 
