Svanängen sounds less boyish here, not as joyously stuck in an endless summer as he did on 2007's deliciously toothsome Loney, Noir (Sub Pop) and its three tougher-to-find import-only predecessors. Instead, much of the proceedings are cast in a more wintry light, bristling with a wistfulness which makes the soaring vocals all the sweeter.

The exuberance is still present, but rather than making this a defining quality of the album, he has channeled it more carefully, more thoughtfully. Dear John doesn't give the same sustained sugar hiccups as Loney, Noir, but ultimately that's what makes his latest a creative leap forward. By revealing more than mere youthful exhilaration, he has crafted a much more mature, emotionally rich listening experience.

Technically speaking, Svenängen might be described as having a voice with relatively limited range, but he knows how to use it to tremendous effect. High and thin and ready to set itself a-tremble at any given moment, it sometimes gets compared to that of Sam Beam of Iron and Wine or Justin Vernon of Bon Iver - an observation helped by his similar fondness for sending fluttering falsetto murmurs into listener's ear holes.

Unlike those two touchstones, however, Svenängen fashions his intimate listening experiences from far more than folky compositions and acoustic ambience: electronic textures play a significant part in making things nice and womblike on Dear John, laying down a shimmering backdrop for the hushed confessions found here. To my ears, he sometimes bears similarities to Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, or perhaps Ben Gibbard on his laptop-pop, indie-electro Postal Service project - the latter seems particularly relevant, as both Gibbard's synth-savvy songwriting partner, Jimmy Tamborello, and Svenängen concern themselves with matching frequently chilly keyboard timbres to the frailties and vulnerabilities of the human voice.

Inevitably, thanks in part to their shared nationality, Loney Dear's music also tends to be on the receiving end of many Jens Lekman comparisons. Both are fans of intricate, multiple-layered constructions, and both are quite adept at tapping into the wild fevers and high dramas of adolescence - even if those years are now definitely behind them. With Dear John, however, the similarities have eroded somewhat. While Lekman has mostly maintained his optimism over the course of his recording career, Svenängen's latest chapter takes delight in venturing into the darkness.

Much of the disc is aglow with a sharp, icy sheen: subtle electronic patterns are delicately, artfully stacked atop one another, clear and crystalline but still more than a bit deceptive. A cursory listen might reveal only a basic keyboard arrangement, but successive spins reveal considerable layering at work here. Underneath a passage's twinkling melody there is likely to be a full dialogue of electro murmurs, mutters, and rejoinders as well.

Understated acoustic guitar strumming, woodwinds, and percussion fill out the sound, and Svenängen has a flair for arranging it all in a manner that is both bewilderingly lush and chilly and measured in its precision. The opener, for example - “Airport Surroundings” - throbs away with a clinical motorik beat, but the insertion of soft-palmed hand claps and occasional pizzicato strings gives the song a balance of warmth. Still, there's the creep-out chiming synth melody to be reckoned with - imagine a John Carpenter or Goblin score, and you wouldn't be too far off - and the rather ominous foghorn blares at the end don't exactly end things on an elated note, either.

In between, malice rears its head from time to time, as evidenced by the lyric, “I bought a ticket to Hell when I met you.” Nearly the entirety of the vocal track is forced out in a breathless torrent of words - half-sung, half-spoken, and completely unlike much of what listeners have to come to expect from the vocalist. It's a titillating intro, and “Everything Turns to You” makes good on such promises by following them up with an equally nervy meditation, twitchy from clackety percussion, urgent strings, and slightly atonal circular guitar lines. Svenängen builds the song slowly, guardedly, adding elements in only the smallest increments, until it eventually swells into a ravishingly tense document of personal drama.

Dear John does have its share of tender moments. “I Was Only Going Out” - perhaps the most deserving of the Postal Service reference in its construction - begins as a sweetly sung admission of regret but eventually opens up into much more, moving from a simple strummed-guitar-and-organ-hum to a lulling midtempo cymbal-tapping shuffle and at last into a jubilant whistle-happy finale.

“Summers” is the disc's most optimistic moment, blending radiant folk-pop - complete with lovely harmonica - with a rumbling synth-pulse worthy of early OMD recordings. The title track, with its fluttered pleas to “sleep well tonight, tomorrow we'll fight” is a gorgeous waltz, piling woodwinds and brass against sparkling synths and playful runs of glockenspiel. Svenängen's falsetto - delicate and honeyed and almost buckling under at its highest notes - might not be the most forceful instrument in the world, but it is still quite moving here.

Top honors, though, go to “Under a Silent Sea," whose inspired transformation over its five and a half minutes continues to thrill me even after countless listens. Starting off as an electro-acoustic web of quietly ringing guitar, low rumbling atmospheric noises, and oddly iridescent hums, the song spotlights Svenängen's brittle self-harmonizing as he offers eerily calm end-statements as “I must have turned fast, 'cause I did not see it come."

In time, the soft rhythmic pit-er-pats give in to thumping rolls of timpani and frosty, Knife-like swells of chiming, crying synth; odd vocoder effects gurgle away now and again, a cold techno beat kicks in, and a dread-inducing keyboard melody brings the Carpenter reference back to the bleeding, shrieking fore. By the number's end, “Under a Silent Sea” has mutated into a despairing stab of troubled Euro-house, and I doubt you'll ever see it coming.

Get nervy! Here's the vid for “Airport Surroundings”: