LYKKE LI - I Never Learn

Lykke Li stares out at us from the cover of her third album, a cold, detached black and white as frosty as the winter of her native Sweden, the veil, the folded arms and the enigmatic expressiveness that almost suggest a dark-hued transposition of some angelic proto-Renaissance Madonna. It's hard to imagine what she's thinking, how she's looking at us, and yet the shift from the imagery chosen for her previous records is tangible: we can argue all we like about the actual iconic status of the shot (in this writer's opinion, it's been a while since an artist portrait managed to be so evocative in all its simplicity), but this is the first time the Swedish singer-songwriter has abandoned stylization and bolder compositions to offer nothing but herself, free of any other interference.

What does all this have to do with the content of "I Never Learn"? A great deal, far more than you might think at first glance: always inclined to pour part of her life and experiences into her music, but with a gaze that could simultaneously cast wider glances at the surrounding world and human relationships, on this new album the field of action narrows drastically, close-ups become dominant, and very few concessions are made to dialogue, confrontation or broader panoramas. In the album's nine songs, what emerges is nothing but Lykke Li herself, the fears, insecurities and contradictions that drive her, ever since a painful breakup forced her to reconsider her relationship with solitude and affection: a musical narrative that, from its very premise, is anything but easy going.

It was to be expected, then, that within such a narrow focus the pop exuberance that had characterized her first two records (though already largely reabsorbed on the second, however much the bland but hugely successful remix of "I Follow Rivers" might suggest otherwise) would end up clashing, finding no proper context amid bitter, harrowing confessions whose rawness deserved to be presented with as few filters as possible. A far cry, in short, from the glamorous sheen of "21", which dealt with similar material but with more sophisticated lines. A rough, dusty production, almost suggesting the allure of a lost classic from the '70s (alongside her trusted collaborator Björn Yttling, also Greg Kurstin of the Bird And The Bee, who also worked on Lily Allen's "Sheezus"), dry arrangements, mostly acoustic, a rhythm section stripped right down, often absent altogether: Li aims straight at the essence of her own art, revealing a folk maturity never truly explored before and showing off a songwriting that has finally reached full maturity.

Indeed, the songwriting: direct and meticulously crafted, it pierces mind and heart with surgical precision, pairing a marked conciseness in tracklist and runtime (just nine tracks for a little over thirty-three minutes in total) with a pronounced variety of tone, able to keep the focus on Lykke's voice, never so assured and controlled in its delivery. The opening track already reveals the change that's taken place: all it takes is a lashing strum of acoustic guitar to set the singer-songwriter off, and any trace of optimism is immediately swept away. As if that weren't enough, the superbly crafted bed of keyboards heightens the sense of a drama that has already played out: it's a heartbroken woman speaking here, powerless before the world, yet never grotesque or pathetic, simply unable to turn her life around, to get past the barriers standing in her way.

Yet even as the poetic vein grows this pained and intimate, the fertile melodic instincts that characterized "Wounded Rhymes" aren't sacrificed in the slightest — if anything, they're reworked, reshaped into a form one might almost venture to call "classic." With a repertoire that perfectly balances both the scents of a long-lost West Coast and more precise nods to the brilliant girl-bands of three decades ago (above all the Bangles and the less crowd-pleasing side of the Go-Go's, the band of a certain Belinda Carlisle), the songstress molds her delivery, bending it to the demands of a vocal style that can carry a choral quality more relevant than ever, along with heartfelt soul inflections, taking on, on their own turf, all of today's (too many!) divas of fine singing.

So while the distinctiveness of her timbre, vulnerable and subtly childlike, takes flight in the moving, purely acoustic ballad "Love Me Like I'm Not Made Of Stone", conversely the Swede proves just as adept at collaborating with thick gospel choirs while preserving the refined elegance of a melody like that of "Heart Of Steel", among the highest points of her entire career.

Not that the rest pales in comparison: less immediately winning on the whole (as much as the aforementioned tracks can be, given their firmly anti-commercial stance), but equally decisive in the brilliance of their writing, songs like "No Rest For The Wicked" (whose piano opening, almost like a frosty music box, perfectly introduces the idea of a romance doomed to dissolve), or the dejected plea of "Silverline" (the strangest take on dream-pop you're likely to come across this year) let us appreciate a talent who, having broken free from the constraints of a world she probably never truly belonged to, is now free to present herself exactly as she is.

And there's no doubt that this arrival at such a deeply disillusioned state (never mind that the artist claims she won't take anything away from these experiences), at a vision steeped in boundless bitterness, will disappoint all those who were quick to hastily brand our artist as the latest phenomenon tailor-made for dancefloors (so much so that A$AP Rocky's remix of "No Rest For The Wicked" is unlikely to get much radio play). But another thing is equally certain: Lykke Li has truly found her voice. It's a genuine shame she had to go through such hardship to find it, but the new album carries that weight with all its dramatic beauty, a beauty one hopes will travel far.

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16/05/2014