Must-Listen: Lyrical Guru Jens Lekman's Life Will See You Now

In Jens Lekman's 2007 song "A Postcard to Nina," a narrator must pretend to be his lesbian friend's boyfriend for a dinner with her uptight father. Lies are told; legs are kicked under the table. "I'm doing my best, can you pass the figs?" sings Lekman. The Swedish oddball's genre-hopping new album, Life Will See You Now, is filled with similarly charming vignettes. "Hotwire the Ferris Wheel" trails a couple as they break into a fairground one night to shake off the blues. In "Wedding in Finistere," a musician comforts a cigarette-puffing bride-to-be who worries that marriage will mark the end of her youth. But the highlight is "How Can I Tell Him," a tale of two pals on a train and a touching commentary on the vulnerability and homophobia that keeps men from truly getting close. In moments like this, Lekman argues that the meaning of life lies in its riskiest, most valuable offering: human connection.

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