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Reviews

Jens Lekman, ‘An Argument With Myself’ (Secretly Canadian)

“Shut up! / No, you shut up!” sings fey Swedish popster Jens Lekman to/at himself on his new EP’s title track. It’s the first release since 2007’s intensely precious masterstroke Night Falls Over Kortedala, and he seems conflicted. Said schizo musings are set to tropical guitar and percussion fit for Gloria Estefan’s “Conga,” while closer “So This Guy at My Office” sounds like Jonathan Richman covering Bob Marley — feats of strange merit, but awkward fits for his detailed lyrical screeds. The real triumph is “Waiting for Kirsten,” a bucolic strummer that turns a tale of stalking Ms. Dunst through Gothenburg into a treatise on free health care.