Youth Novels (Digital Album)

by

Lykee Li

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Lykke Li is Sweden's latest Pop export and she's gotten the inevitable comparisons to fellow Nordic Pop stars Robyn and Annie, but in truth, her style is miles different from those two. 22 years old she may be, but her music is far ahead of her years, even her arty cover photo sets her apart from those two.

Her debut "Youth novels" is produced by Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John and Lasse Mårtén, it is rather experimental and dreamy, fitting her light airy vocals to a tee.

In an album awash in brilliance, standouts include "Dance dance dance" (tapped percussion and strummed percussion, a squidgy Sax solo building to a nice choir finale), the sunny "I'm good, I'm gone" (with a killer chorus and lovely keyboard flourishes), the acoustic/Pop "Let it fall", the lilting Jazz/Folk "Little Bit" (which wouldn't sound out of place on a Kings of Convenience CD), the stark yet astonishingly beautiful ballad "Hanging high", the acoustic spoken largely instrumental "This trumpet in my head" (of course daintily adorned with trumpet playing), the buzzing Björk-like "Complaint department", the hand clap-filled Jazzy/Synth number "Breaking it up", and the brooding, almost hymnal closing number "Window blues" (with haunting harmonies).

This album is incredibly clever pop music with a great attention to detail. If only all Pop music could be this intelligent. I think we'll be hearing a lot more of Ms. Li in the near future.

Lykke Li, Youth Novels (EMI, 2008)

I'm sure you've heard "I'm good. I'm gone.", Lykke Li's first single from Youth Novels. It's been pretty much everywhere; TV ads, movie trailers, all over the radio. And with good reason; it's catchy as hell and the lyrics are way off in left field, but still accessible enough that pop zombies who think it's no good if you can't hear it on your favorite adult contemporary station will groove along to it in their cars. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, the rest of Youth Novels doesn't quite measure up to its first single; there are quite a few tracks here that fall into that vapid-pop trap, never distinguishing themselves from the rest of the overproduced, industry-standard pap that "I'm good. I'm gone." subverts so wonderfully. That's not to say there's nothing else of worth here; I adore the weirdness of "This Trumpet in My Head", and there's a surprising gravity to "Window Blues" one doesn't find much in this sort of light pop music. The problem being that I can use a term like "this sort of light pop music" here and no one will question me, because much of the rest of the album is insanely lightweight. "Dance, Dance, Dance", for example, just plods along sounding like pretty much every other Europop sensation (and yes, while I understand most people think that's a good thing in pop music; I will never understand the idea that predictable, same-sounding music is the way to go). More of the latter here than the former, I'm afraid, though the good songs here are worth the price of admission. ** ½