Pitchfork

Free swingin', ukelele-slingin' Swede Jens Lekman's got no plans to trudge up Hammer Hill on his recently-announced string of tour dates, but he has lined up five sweet summer's nights at festivals throughout Europe.

Lekman's label Secretly Canadian also reports that the full length album he, at one point, promised he'd never make-- the album he was, as recently claimed on his Small Talk blog, "scared… would become [his] own Chinese Democracy"-- is "tentatively scheduled for a late-fall release." Tentatively scheduled, eh? Sounds suspiciously like the real Chinese Democracy. I'd pay big bucks to hear Jens cover "Patience".

As you'll recall, Jens tackled Scout Niblett's "Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death" on the just-released Secretly Canadian SC100 comp.

The sound of distant carnival drums:

06-10 Paris, France - Villette Sonique pa Cabaret Sauvage
06-29 Barcelona, Spain - Faraday Festival
06-30 Stockholm, Sweden - Accelerator Festival
07-20 Tonsberg, Norway - Slottsfjellsfestivalen
08-18 Arhus, Denmark - Pop Revo 07