Trying to mend a broken heart

Though he’s been voted Sweden’s 13th sexiest man, Jens Lekman admits he has felt the pain of a lost love, writes Ed Power

JENS LEKMAN is an unlikely heartthrob. The Gothenburg singer is pale and anxious, with a misanthropic streak that would put Morrissey to shame. So he was as surprised as anyone when a Swedish magazine voted him the country’s 13th sexiest man. In fact, he was astonished.

“Sweden is like that,” he says, with the barest hint of a chuckle. “It is one of those weird places where you can be plunged into incredible fame for a short amount of time. I was a little bit famous for a year. I guess it’s a small country. That’s why it happens. I think I would have placed higher if it wasn’t for all the players from the Swedish soccer team.”

Lekman became a cult star with 2007’s swoonful, sweeping Night Falls Over Kortedala. The album was an instant classic, a beautiful synergy of Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths and the Magnetic Fields. With every track a potential single, it sounded more like a greatest hits than a conventional LP. This was exactly as he had planned.

“It was put together like a mini Eurovision song contest,” he says. “My friends would award points to the different songs and that is how I decided the track-listing. ”

You wonder what fans will make of his new record, I Know What Love Isn’t. Recorded after a painful break-up, it is a concept album about having your heart stomped into the floor. If you aren’t prepared to go to the dark side with him, the 10 songs make for a wrenching listen.

“This record was a very different experience,” he says. “I didn’t realise it at the beginning but I wanted to put an album together entirely by myself. Starting off the last thing I had intended was to write about the break-up. It took a long time for me to figure out how I wished to proceed.”

Lekman had fallen in love before. This time was different. He was in his late 20s, a fickle youth no longer. He was devastated when things went wrong. His ex moved home to America, he went to Melbourne and tried to find himself. A breakup album was the furthest thing from his mind.

“While I wasn’t consciously aware of it I had the vague sense something was going on with the record. It took some time for me to work out what it was. The turning point was when I put out an EP called an Argument With Myself. It served as a clearing house, a way for me to figure out what I really wanted.

“With the EP I was able to get rid of certain songs. After that I saw there was a theme to the material that remained. At the start I wanted to write anything but an album about love. And in the end I did exactly that.”

Lekman is a friendly fellow but has a melodramatic streak. He famously abandoned Facebook and Twitter, concerned it was getting in the way of an honest dialogue with fans.

“I prefer communication with people through my small blog,” he says. ‘They tell me such amazing stories. I would like one day to be able to record an album about all these stories I’ve heard down the years. How great it would be to step outside the Jens Lekman character. Some of my best song ideas have come out that dialogue. I feel the inbox of my email programme is where I pick up many of my more natural free-flowing lyrics.”

He also briefly quit music, after internet rumours of his death in a motorbike accident reached his mother. He hung up his guitar and secured a post at a bingo hall in Gothenburg. The new career didn’t take. Within a week he was back writing songs.

Fans feared he’d taken another turn for the worse when, previously the owner of a handsome quiff, Lekman has now shaved his head and wears a fisherman’s hat. He is pale and pinched, a stony faced man posing against a slate sky. He looks like the unhappiest guy on the planet.

“Yes, I shaved my head,” he says matter of factly. “It’s five years since my last record. I shaved it a long time ago. There is nothing to be read into it, really. People change their hair.”

Lekman used to hate talking to the press but is coming around. He learned to cope by practicing interviews with a teddy bear. Speaking in the bear’s voice he’d ask questions and then, as Jens, answer them. It’s clear he isn’t joking.

“I’ve always been interested in comedy and I read that is how stand-ups make themselves comfortable. They perform their material in front of a pretend audience. So I tried it and it worked. Now I like doing interviews. I feel as if I am picking something up.”

* Jens Lekman plays Whelan’s in Dublin tomorrow