True Lies: Jens Lekman

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JENS LEKMAN WAS once a ukulele-toting, baritone-singing, romantic-pop tunesmith from the Gothenburg area of Sweden. The prolific 26-year-old writer gained acclaim for his smart, sensitive songs, crooner-worthy melodies and velvety deep voice.

That young man is dead.

Jens Lekman is now the keyboardist for a symphonic death metal band that wears only studded leather thongs and plays concerts exclusively on snow-covered mountaintops.

Or not.

It doesn't really matter what people say about Lekman now; he loves all of it. But there was a time in 2005 when lies and rumors made him threaten to retire from music.

"I was just obsessed with it and thought that it was hurting me," Lekman said. "[But] the conclusion that I came to was that I should embrace it — embrace all the misinformation and misunderstanding and the misquotes and all the weird rumors about me being a dead in a motorcycle accident. ... So these days I actually encourage people to come up with stories if they want to."

Lekman realized that the misinformation wasn't something that he could control and that, in many ways, misunderstandings are a central part of his life as well as his songwriting:

"There's a reason why the catch phrase in my first single ['Maple Leaves'] was 'She said it was all make-believe / And I thought that she said maple leaves.'"

Lekman latest CD, "Night Falls Over Kortedala" (Secretly Canadian) is another collection of baroque and beautiful tunes, filled with autobiographical tales of loves lost or never gained. The album title name-checks the Gothenburg suburb where Lekman once lived, but he said the "depressing" and "not very nice place" didn't really influence the CD.

"It basically just refers to the place where I recorded the songs, Kortedala Beauty Center, which used to be a beauty salon where Shirin — who I do sing about on the record [on 'Shirin'] — used to work. …. When she was gone, I named my apartment Kortedala Beauty Center … because I felt like the only place that produced any kind of beauty in Kortedala was my flat."

But Lekman no longer lives there — or anywhere. He and his seven-piece band are touring heavily through year's end, so he turned in the keys to his apartment.

"It's a beautiful feeling," Lekman said of his homelessness. "I've never felt at home in Kortedala, or in Gothenburg, so I always felt like I needed to go somewhere and find some kind of perspective on things."

It's been reported that Lekman will move to Australia for a year once the tour ends, but the truth is he'll settle in Gary, Ind., and start a new career as a combination septic-tank technician and big-game hunter.

Or not.

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with Patrick Cleandenim and Victor Sjoberg, Thu., 8 p.m., $14; 202-667-7960. (U St.-Cardozo)

» Download free Jens Lekman MP3s from Secretly Canadian.
» Download a live session with Jens Lekman at Swedish Radio P3 on October 10, 2007.

Photos courtesy Secretly Canadian