(LL)
Listening to Swedish pop star Lykke Li's follow-up to 2008's debut Youth Novels, it's easy to forget that she's still only 24-years-old. There's an earnestness and weight to the album that simultaneously gives it its focus, but also makes the listener yearn for some light amidst the bleak post-breakup laments. On Little Bit, the hypnotic centrepiece of her debut, she was "a little bit in love", while here "sadness is her boyfriend", the album recorded in the aftermath of an unrequited love affair. Thankfully, sadness tends to suit her, with producer Bj�rn Yttling (he of Peter Bj�rn and John fame) encasing the songs in a heady mix of primal drums, tinpot percussion, scratchy guitars and, on the excellent Love Out of Lust, a desolate whistle solo. Lyrically, Li flits between aggressor (Get Some's provocative "I'm your prostitute, you gonna get some") and victim (all of Sadness Is a Blessing), while the closing Silent My Song features a line that sums up Li's own approach to songwriting: "You see pain like it is pleasure, like a work of art". The pain was worth it.
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