Jens Lekman doesn’t want you to love his music so much as he wants you to fall in love with him.

For most songwriters, this would be an outright disaster or at the very least a dealbreaker… but somehow, against all odds, Lekman is always able to muster the earnestness required to pull it off. The truth is that loving his music–and there is a lot to love–and loving Lekman is one and the same.

His music is goofy and awkward in the most endearing way imaginable, but the real selling point is his unshakable status as a hopeless, hapless romantic. On “A Postcard to Nina,” he is administered a polygraph test by his lover’s father, only to catch himself seconds after spitting out an inadvertent lie. “Oh, God, what have I done!” Lekman exclaims as the music squirms its way through contortions beneath him.

Minutes later, during the opening seconds of the following track, “Into Eternity,” he cooly croons “If I had to choose a moment in time to take with me into eternity, I would choose this moment with you in my arms,” later adding, “I am a prisoner of this moment with you in my arms.” If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the sound of hipster girls (and boys) swooning to the floor across the globe. By virtue of his ingeniously slipshod musical arrangements and diffident vocal delivery, Lekman writes himself a pass for lyrics that would be cringe-worthy slipping from other lips.

“I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You” is one of the top songs of 2007 on any record, an effortless tale of breaking hearts predicated on a seductively simple piano figure. Lekman illustrates his growth as ringmaster here, pulling in electronic whirrs, galvanic drum machines, hand claps and finger snaps, and synthesized string curlicues, all building toward the haunting refrain of “I’m sorry I couldn’t love you enough.”

Among the many other highlights is the falsetto balladry of “Shirin,” a tale of salon seat romance that acts as a perfect sequel to Morrissey’s classic “Hairdresser on Fire.” Here, Lekman does what he does best, combining unexpected, starkly visual lyricism with a meandering score. It’s a figurative love affair, he explains, when Shirin cuts his hair–she is an Iraqi war exile earning her living by styling folks from her apartment as her mother looks on from a nearby rocking chair. “I show her my passport, what I looked like, but she just smiles and lets me know it’s going to be alright.” It is all as unlikely as everything else in Lekman’s wonderful universe, but it is absolutely captivating in a way these words can’t describe.

Purchase Night Falls on Kortedala on CD or as MP3 downloads from Amazon.com.

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