Sterile and beautiful are not words you would often use together. Especially in music.
So Lykke Li’s latest album is a real contradiction in so many ways. After the sweetness of her debut, and the fire of her sophomore effort, comes the slow burn of ‘I Never Learn’.
The anger of the Swedish songwriter’s last record has been replaced by a much more somber and reflective mood. Less guts and more heart. And it is in this heart where the juxtaposition lies. There is a cold, almost sterile beauty to the music, it sounds clinical in its execution. Every nuance is meticulously planned and thought out in every detail with a tone and ambition more reminiscent of Kraftwerk and Joy Division than you might at first expect.
The detail is heavy, dense with effects and atmosphere creating a grandiose sound, but with a light touch. Li’s light vocal style adds even more layers to the album’s enchanting atmosphere, and brings out a real tenderness in the tracks. At times the songs almost sound like hymns – never more so than on ‘No Rest For The Wicked‘, the track most similar to her earlier material, but almost hymnal in tone and with an oddly familiar feel of recent Coldplay efforts.
‘Just Like a Dream‘ is ethereal and rousing while ‘Gunshot‘ is powerful and truly demonstrates the clinical beauty which permeates record. However, the real pain at the very core of the album is found in ‘Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone‘, the only time the mask of detail and distance slips and true emotion pours forth. The stripped and natural performance stands wonderfully apart from the rest of the record, while the Cyndi Lauper-esque ‘Sleeping Alone‘ brings the album to a suitably poignant close.
More impressive still is the album’s range over such a short duration. In only nine tracks Li manages to cover acres of ground, bringing influences in everywhere from classic pop, country, gospel, indie-rock and on and on and on. All of which in and of itself would be impressive, but the cleverness and charm of ‘I Never Learn’ is in just how these influences are used. The tracks are not just pastiches of other songs, overwrought and overdone. Instead, much like her ghostly vocals, they are merely faint wisps of something half-heard, half-remembered. The influences are there, but they are incorporeal and unfathomable, always remaining just out of reach. Barely an echo, but certainly there. Haunting the listener.
And this is a haunting record, with a tragic air throughout. It would be easy to compare Li to many of her contemporaries, people working similar ground like Emiliana Torrini or even Peter Bjorn and John, but in reality what she does is very different, very different indeed. The warmth of these artists has been removed, but not the impact.
Somehow, through creating this distance from the heart, Lykke Li manages to be more true to it.
And this album is all heart, even if it is a cold and broken one.
