After initially finding an audience through peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Lekman signed to Secretly Canadian Records in 2003, and went on to release a slew of cherished material, including three cult limited-edition EPs – Maple Leaves, Rocky Dennis, and Julie – later collected on the 2005 compilation album Oh You’re So Silent Jens. His DIY fantasias found their fullest and most celebrated form in 2007 on his second album proper, the exquisite Night Falls Over Kortedala – Lekman’s self-professed “dream record”. It went to number one in Sweden and was later hailed as one of the 200 best albums of the 2000s by Pitchfork, as well as one of the top 100 albums of the 21st century so far by The Guardian.

Now, like Oh You’re So Silent Jens, it no longer exists in its original form.

Oh You’re So Silent Jens enigmatically disappeared in 2011; Night Falls Over Kortedala followed suit in early 2022. Lekman’s impulse for giving old music fresh life and context has led him to remake the records under new names, each delicately positioned in dialogue with the past – the same albums, just different. The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom and The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom are a pair of lovingly and painstakingly assembled reduxes each keeping the same core tracklisting, spirit and source material as the originals, but blending brand new versions of some tracks, in part or in whole, together with many tracks left largely as they were. Both records are fleshed out with rare, previously unreleased, and even previously unfinished old songs, as well as other contemporaneous material such as cassette diaries.

On The Cherry Trees, two of Lekman’s best-loved early breakout singles are completely reimagined – ‘Maple Leaves’ as a tender ballad burnished with warm strings; tragi-comic illegal taxi ride to oblivion ‘Black Cab’ in two different versions, a handsome full band pop song and a gentle acoustic lullaby. The Linden Trees repackages all the true-life tales, magic, and mystery of Night Falls for a new age, yet in wholly familiar form, from the joyous ‘The Opposite of Hallelujah’ to hilariously uplifting missive ‘A Postcard to Nina’ and open-hearted love-song ‘Your Arms Around Me’.

Taken together, the new albums form a sort of belated farewell to Lekman’s formative days as a bedroom Scott Walker, panning for sample gold in stacks of vintage vinyl. Albeit not a farewell to the original albums themselves, which will live on in fans’ record collections, and perhaps illicit corners of the internet. Spread to the wind.

Tracklist:

November 27, 2002
At The Dept. Of Forgotten Songs
Maple Leaves
Sky Phenomenon
Pocketful Of Money
Black Cab
Someone To Share My Life With
December 19, 2002
Rocky Dennis' Farewell Song To The Blind Girl
Rocky Dennis In Heaven
Jens Lekman's Farewell Song To Rocky Dennis
Julie (RMX) LP2: April 23, 2003
I Saw Her In The Anti-War Demonstration
A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill
A Man Walks Into A Bar
Another Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill
F-Word
The Wrong Hands
June 1, 2003
Eureka
The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom
Black Cab (Acoustic)

UPC: 656605038834
Label: Secretly Canadian
Release Date: 6.3.22
Format: CD

Jens Lekman - The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom (CD)