An Argument With Myself
Swedish indie-pop wunderkind Jens Lekman keeps getting weirder. There was always a skewered vision behind his music, going back to his most basic folk pleas, but this 2011 EP is a hilarious and quite upbeat collection. The title track detours into a reggae groove for its sudden middle, while the rest of the song sounds like a Paul Simon world music extravaganza after some serious energy drinks. “Waiting for Kirsten” reminisces on the greatness of his Gothenburg home while it motors on with an invigorating chorus and waits around to stalk Kirsten Dunst, who’d been shooting a movie in town. “A Promise” throws together a slick studio groove while Lekman tries to distract an ill friend. “New Directions” highlights a horn section and seductive syncopated rhythm. “So This Guy at My Office” ends things with woodwinds and another fine laid-back rhythm. Lekman is a major talent and a man to keep your eye on.
In the symbology of Lekman's songbook, motion is a means to stave off insanity or succumb to it and the songs on 'An Argument With Myself' EP deal with many types of movement, both big and small, from why he moved to Melbourne to the societal change/movement in his old hometown of Gothenburg to simple map directions. The opening song and title track begins with this excellent Jens archetype, recounting an inner battle while walking home through the central business district of Melbourne, Australia. While on its face, “Waiting For Kirsten” seems to trace an ultimately futile odyssey to track down Kirsten Dunst while she films in Gothenburg, its really an attempt to work out the complex relationship one has with one's hometown. The comfort and disappoint of what's changed, and what seems to never change. Alternately, the horn driven “New Directions” brings a slightly manic roadmap of directions to any place but here and any time but now. The songs are witty, literal, and impeccably location-specific, and they’re all heading somewhere as a means to either go crazy or keep from doing so. With more fractured textures that combine horns, flutes, string swells and arpeggiated guitars, the opening of the EP finds Jens in constant state of transition, musically, as well. However, as “An Argument With Myself” comes to a close the arrangements get looser, more reggae-tinged and relaxed, like a music box winding down. For a moment, the motion almost stops. For now.
The Swedish indie-pop dramatist's new EP is a compact gem, one that shows different facets of the singer. Each song does something distinct both sonically and lyrically, filtering one rarified but relatable sensibility through guise after revealing guise.
Jens Lekman is a singer-songwriter made for the social-networking era. He’s obviously unfamiliar with the concept of “over-sharing”: His lyrics are so detailed and so personal, they could be a series of strung-together status updates. On the new EP An Argument With Myself, those details largely deal in dissatisfaction…
It’s understandable that lots of folks like to draw parallels between the music of Jens Lekman and, say, Morrissey or Belle…
Coming almost four years after the release of the excellent Night Falls Over Kortedala album, Jens Lekman's 2011 EP An Argument with Myself is made up of five songs that according to Lekman didn’t fit the mood of the songs he’d been working on for a full album.
Jens Lekman 'An Argument With Myself' album review on Northern Transmissions. An Argument With Myself' by Jens Lekman is now out on Secretly Canadian