Jens Lekman Announces ‘The Cherry Trees Are Still In Blossom’ And ‘The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom’

Swedish artist Jens Lekman returns today with an anticipated announcement: he and Secretly Canadian will reissue his cherished seminal albums, Oh You’re So Silent Jens and Night Falls Over Kortedala, both of which no longer exist in their original forms. Each album is set for re-release under new titles: Oh You’re So Silent Jens as The Cherry Trees Are Still in Blossom, out today, and Night Falls Over Kortedala as The Linden Trees Are Still in Blossom, out  on May 4th. A pair of lovingly and painstakingly assembled reduxes, each release keeps the same core tracklisting, spirit, and source material as its original, while blending brand new versions of some tracks—in part or in whole—together with many tracks left largely as they were. Both records also now feature rare, previously unreleased songs, as well as other contemporaneous material such as cassette diaries. “These new records are like portals that can lead you to the old records if you want,” Lekman reflects. “I think that they can lead you to another time and place, where you could work with music in a different way.”

Lekman today also shared a Jesper Norda & Kristian Berglund-directed new video for one of his treasured early singles, “Maple Leaves”, originally released in 2004 and reimagined on The Cherry Trees Are Still in Blossom as a tender ballad burnished with warm strings. Lekman will commemorate and detail the story behind these albums and their renewal through two episodes of Secretly Canadian’s ‘Secretly Society Podcast’.