Artist: Lykke Li
Title: Wounded Rhymes
Genre: Indie Rock / Electro-Pop
Release Date: 4th March 2011
Label: Warner Music International
Album Review
After the 60’s pop music has started to be slowly degraded, it became self-conscious and no longer expressed a light aspect of reality. The pop entertainers started to take themselves seriously considering themselves “artists”. This shift was observed in the audiences as well; they took mellow-sugary-sweet songs as deep truths and started to identify their feelings and desires with lines and refrains which if taken seriously would only remark something extremely ridiculous.
LYKKE LI seems to have understood perfectly this downhill and has refused to follow. And instead of making another pop album she turned her eyes to the basics - the 60’s, in order to produce this quite remarkable album. There’s something there that surely belongs to that era, yet the sound and the lyrics are not retro obsessed, LYKKE LI is digging there to find out what was lost in time and under the pressure of audiences and disco labels. And what she’s found is an underlying sorrow which is engrossed through the more light music as they juxtapose perfectly. There’s no place for the outdated optimism here. And though at times the songs have that sugary feeling in their lines the way they sound is not sugary at all.
LYKKE LI has its first album ‘Youth Novels’ to its name and several songs featured in films and TV programmes. In her second album, ‘Wounded Rhymes’, LYKKE LI has expanded this search and has built something with many distinctive cornerstones of the pop tradition, she have stretched and twisted them to something that looks like a Goya’s painting with Warhol’s colours. Some of the songs that stood out for me were the ‘Youth knows no pain’, ‘I follow rivers’, ‘Get some’ that exactly underpin what I mentioned about their music and lyrics in the most striking way. ‘I know places’ is remarkable in its Indie aspect that is “independent” indeed and not just labelled Indie, whilst the ‘Silent my song’ is my fave in its pop heaviness that adds a plasmatic quality, much like some of the psychedelic songs of the late 60’s with a fresh aspect. In short, LYKKE LI isn’t afraid to experiment and is able to produce something very unique, a truly great and wonderful album.
Tracklist
01. Youth knows no pain – 3.01
02. I follow rivers – 3.42
03. Love out of lust – 4.44
04. Unrequited Love – 3.11
05. Get some – 3.23
06. Rich kids blues – 3.03
07. Sadness is a blessing – 4.01
08. I know places – 6.02
09. Jerome – 4.20
10. Silent my song – 5.28
Line-up
Li Lykke Timotej Zacharisson - music, songwriting, vocals
Websites
http://www.lykkeli.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/lykkeli
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9 / 10
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