When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog (studio album)
by Jens Lekman

A hopeless romantic, but he manages to get away with it. The vocals remind me so much of Matt Berninger(The National), I've always wondered if I'm alone in that, as I've never heard anyone else draw the same comparison.

From babyBlueSedan 07/19/2020 03:27

This one took me a few listens to get into as I expected something poppier along the lines of Night Falls Over Kortedala. It's much more intimate and only really bursts open on a couple tracks ("You Are the Light" and the closer), but after a few listens the subtlety of the other tracks started to hit me as well. The crackling backing of "Tram No 7" and the orchestral "You Are the Light" stand in sharp contrast to the a capella "Do You Remember the Riots," but the best songs are somewhere in between. "If You Ever Need a Stranger" is beautiful and foreshadows the lyrical themes Jens would tackle on future albums. The strongest bit of the album is the last three songs, starting with the plaintive and hypnotic "Psychogirl," which segues into the title track, the most touching song on the album. The triumphant closer is the perfect way to wrap that sequence up, with Jens being as cheeky as ever with that opening bit about suffocating while making out and finding God. His cleverness is already apparent here, though I do think this brilliant turns of phrase aren't always quite worked out here and sometimes feel a bit clumsy. The "red in the face as a lobster" line from "Do You Remember the Riots" still feels like a forced rhyme even though I now enjoy the song, and the "I don't think we should reveal her name" bit from "Psychogirl" is just tedious. " I'll forgive "We went home to her place and cooked up some chili, it warmed us from the inside cuz the outside was chilly" because how can you not? Speaking of that track - "The Cold Swedish Winter" - it has the most beautiful line on the album about wanting to kiss someone because of passion and not because of circumstances. Overall this is a great debut but he'd do better; I wouldn't mind cutting "Julia" and "Sylvia" because they're both in the style of "Pyschogirl" and the latter is easily the best of the three. But the rest is all excellent and worth listening to.

Brilliant debut. Jens in his best troubadour shape and probably his most intimate album. I love this gloomy and sensitive period in his career (with the exception of the perfectly joyfull "You are the light"), which is also reflected on the compilation "Oh you're so silent Jens"

From flamingyesdept 03/01/2017 15:22

Wonderful. I actually prefer it to Night Falls Over Kortedala by a hair.