A couple times a year an album comes along that’s so lovely I have to squeeze fully formed sentences out of a frontal lobe reluctant to yield its submission to pleasure. Not only have I learned to love Jens Lekman’s voice, but I appreciate how its thick dolorous qualities are musical correlatives to songs whose insight and quiet Linus-with-a-pet-blanket wit redress their own dolorous qualities. I Know What Love Isn’t replaces the strings of Night Falls Over Kortedala with bold piano lines from the Steve Nieve school; on the likes of “Become Someone Else’s” it’s too damn tinkly, but the song is a triumph anyway thanks Lekman’s flair for extricating himself from a melodic fix by extending a line or jumping to a higher key. Although it lacks material as propulsive as Kortedada‘s “The Opposite of Hallelujah” — as singular as Bona Drag-era Morrissey — he looks elsewhere for the hooks and sentiments, wedded to this axiomatic moment in “Erica America”: “Sinatra had his shit figured out, I presume.” Lekman has a sense of humor about his querulousness — until he succumbs to a melody whose sweetness reminds him of the broken relationship, whose music box gorgeousness won’t mitigate the pain of singing it. Example: “She Just Don’t Want to Be With You Anymore,” anchored by a dropping water sample and synthetic percussion, haunted by a tremoloed guitar, embodied by a major key vocal hook in the chorus that inflects each song in the title with real yearning.
