The forever lovelorn, gloriously romantic Swedish singer Jens Lekman is finally set to release new material on September 19th – an EP entitled ‘An Argument With Myself’, out on Secretly Canadian. This EP arrives over four years since his last album, the wonderful ‘Night Falls Over Kortedala’ – and as Jens explains on the Smalltalk part of his website, will precede a record due in 2012.
“While working on my upcoming album, I found that a few songs were disrupting the order, fucking up the flow. They were juvenile delinquents, they refused to fall in line with the others. I had to isolate them on this EP as a little taste of what’s not to come. ”
NME is thrilled to bring you the UK/European premiere of the first song from that EP, also called ‘An Argument With Myself’.
Whereas Jens’ older material was often sample-heavy (check this Spotify playlist for a list of songs he’s borrowed from), ‘An Argument…’ forsakes that in favour of a lightly tropical twang and fast, bum-shuffling percussion. Since his last album came out, Jens has moved from his native Gothenburg to Australia and back again, and going by this song, his romantic fates have changed along the way too: As he rambles down the streets noticing drunken punters and “backpackers [are] pouring out like a tidal wave of vomit“, he recalls “The way her shadow used to walk by your side, a different time, a different city“.
These aren’t sad streets he’s treading for the most part, however – here Jens channels the wicked comic streak that’s made his recent live shows feel more akin to stand-up than gigs at times, as the crux of the fight he’s having with himself runs to: “Fuck you! No you fuck you!” Always the charmer – Jens, it’s magical to have you back.