Song of the Week

Our favorite Swedish pop troubadour is back with his first album in five years.  Life Will See You Now is jam packed with Jens Lekman's bittersweet brand of literate whimsy.  Guitars, pianos, horns, and strings will set listeners aloft in melancholy bliss, in what is perhaps his sunniest effort to date.

The opening track, "To Know Your Mission," recounts 16-year-old Jens' conversation with a Mormon missionary in 1997.  It is arguably the finest pop song ever written about Mormonism, treating it with a spirit of generosity, and deftly using a young missionary's higher purpose as a springboard to the artist's sincere dreams.  "But in a world full of mouths / I want to be an ear / If there's a purpose to all this / then that's why God put me here."  Amen, Jens.  An obvious, amen.