Album: Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes

Lykke Li
Wounded Rhymes
Atlantic Records
4 stars

Apparently, if Swedish songstress, prolific hipster go-to girl and all-round drama queen Lykke Li “ever got as big as Madonna”, she “would want to run away and die”. As charming as this news is, her message, loud and clear, is that the Top 40 simply isn’t for her. She doesn’t need chart figures or sales numbers, especially not when she is producing material on the level of quality of sophomore effort Wounded Rhymes.

Swerving toward an alternative direction from her debut, Li has dropped the endearing frailty and replaced it with neurotic pining flecked with spells of romantic rebellion. Opening track, ‘Youth Knows No Pain’, calls for an end to the moping and depression of teenage love, while ‘Unrequited Love’ floats back into the hormonal despair she manages to write about so well.

This slightly bi-polar attitude toward l’amour keeps the listener on their toes throughout, reaching a peak with ‘Sadness is a Blessing’. Lines such as “Sadness is my boyfriend / Sadness is my girl” pinpoint the characteristic melancholy stomping she seems to effortlessly produce. Countrywoman Robyn seems to also have the formula locked down, albeit with an electro dance-pop backing track. What is it with these Swedes and their sadness?

As pleasurable as listening to a consistently brilliant album is, there, of course, have to be tracks which stand above the rest. ‘I Follow Rivers’, the album’s second single, re-uses instantly recognisable imprints from ‘Little Bit’ mashed up with aggressive, commanding lyrics. An impressively powerful song, it’s an excellent example of her ever-improving song writing, production skills and clear evidence for why Swedes do it better.

Andrew Gott