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 with Lekman’s native Sweden: “Waiting For Kirsten” sets a schoolboy crush on Kirsten Dunst against a dreary Nordic backdrop of unemployment lines and health-care bureaucracy, while the rubbery reggae-disco number “New Directions” begins by plotting the route out of Lekman’s native Gothenburg.
Feeling like a tourist in his hometown, Lekman takes off for faraway destinations. The title track melds Australian street names and West African polyrhythms; the domestic bliss of “So This Guy At My Office” rocks steady to a Caribbean beat. It’s an incredibly twee trip around the world, and while the EP lacks anything as audacious as the widescreen bluster of “I Remember Every Kiss” (from 2007’s Night Falls Over Kortedala), there’s still a strain of gutsiness in the personalized “get well soon” card of “A Promise.” Of course, when you open an album with a winding trip through your own inner monologue, what’s left to fear? A more timid artist would’ve expressed his sentiments in a DM.