Review: Lykke Li - Youth Novels

Three tracks into Lykke Li's album and I'd all but decided she was marriage material. That is to say she has a fragile wisp of a voice, an achievabley pretty face and enough good songs for me to look her up on Google image search. For the most part Youth Novels has a minimalist feel which suits her breathy sing-speaking style well. The opening track, Window Blues, is so basic as to be barren; pinned by a one finger piano phrase of two alternating notes, backed by a spooky spaghetti western choir. It sets the tone for the best of the album - vulnerable, dark and sinisterly sweet. Some of the up tempo tracks like Complaint Department keep a similar stripped-back approach - using an idiot-simple fuzzy synth bass like a spine to support its soft yet threatening flesh. Instrumental curve balls - a kettle drum throwing in a few warped "boing-g-g" drum beats, for example - only add a gentle reverberating confusion. But while these opening moments conjure a sense of ghostly acoustic experimentation, the sagging middle of the album kill the thrill utterly. The track This Trumpet In My Head is an unnecessary, unrewarding soundscape as the trumpet in question parps over classical guitar and a meaningless spoken vocal. "I can't get that trumpet out of my head" Lykke repeats endlessly. I can.

It's all downhill after that as increasingly normal instrumentation and arrangements cause the previously sparse and haunting echoes to plunge into a plodding inevitably. Even the confrontational imagery of lines like "For you I'd keep my legs apart" don't save songs like Little Bit from sounding like Hello Saferide's cast offs. There are a few bearable choruses but the more mainstream acousti-blandness throttles the previously eerie allure. It's hard to tell whether a studio producer or Lykke herself is responsible but I hope they know it's their fault the wedding's off. Tracks like My become a monotonous shuffling drone with a grating sing-song refrain, Let It Fall pulls out a buzzy drum loop that utterly fails to justify it's existence and I'm Good I'm Gone's mix of hand claps and chunky piano serves only to prove that someone might have heard of Feist but sure as hell didn't get the point. It's upbeat. It's got a catchy, shouty ensemble chorus. It's shit.

By the time the brilliant Dance Dance Dance emerges nervously, like Carrie into the prom queen spotlight, it's too late. The bucket's already fallen. The click-clack percussion and harmony-free instrumentation might recapture the opening's minimalist beauty but it's covered in the pigs' blood of previous tracks and no amount of adorable kooky girl charm is going to make John Travolta get up. Shame, really. As a stripped down EP this could have been startling but cloyed up with meh it feels like a missed chance.