Since Li seems to have featured in quite a few end of year top 50s, there's no better time than now to throw in my too late, unpublished review of the album written for Cluas:
At the (admittedly late coming) time of writing, Lykke Li has been buried beneath an avalanche of adjectives, comparisons, hyperbole and lazy references; she’s everything from the latest in a Swedish invasion to the heir of the knowing naïf role once personified by Altered Images’ Clare Grogan. Strange then, that listening to Youth Novels one can’t help sensing the void between the hype and the restrained nature of the music. This is pop of course – a lot of the tracks are as easily listenable as anything by fellow Scandinavian and arch melodicist Jens Lekman - but they are balanced by a raw emotionalism that finds expression through both Li’s voice and the music, the Scandinavian angle solidified by the producer, Peter Bjorn & John’s Bjorn Yttling.
“Melodies & Desires,” is a clever introduction, a re-interpretation of the standard love song. With sub-zero electronics drifting behind her, Li recites “poetic” erotica in a direct robotic monotone. Rarely in music are lyrics like “Love is the harmony/Desire is the key/Love is the symphony/Come sing some with me” intoned with the passion of an instruction manual, but the song is an astute choice as the introduction to Youth Novels.
As the album progresses, it becomes clear that the accompaniment is as prominent as Li herself. While “Melodies & Desires” showcases the electronic, it’s when the organic elements enter the fray that things become both interesting and eventually bland. The sax on “Dance Dance Dance,” the trumpet on “Everybody But Me” and the pianos littering the album work as a marriage of the electronic and the acoustic, mirroring the clinical analysis the lyrics offer to the most emotional subjects. “Hanging High” is the epitome of this approach; simultaneously sparse and melancholically melodic, the carrying bassline, restrained ornamental instrumentation and Li’s most expressive vocal performance combine to make the song the highlight of the album.
When it results in a song as good as “Hanging High” the instrumental support can only be praised, but not every song is its equal. Eventually the tracks start to run into one another, each sonic trademark becoming vaguer as the running time progresses. Increasingly, the accompaniment dominates the album rather than being an aural expression of Li’s lyrics - the use of production techniques sliding from sublimely restrained to rampantly gimmicky, as if Yttling saw a chance to try out any new idea in real time. This extends to the vocals meshing with the music rather than being placed to the fore, a cardinal sin when arranging for a singer as stylish as Li. As it is, the best places to hear that much-lauded voice are “Tonight,” “Hanging High,” and “Time Flies,” where Li’s distinctiveness raises her above her accompaniment.
Youth Novels possesses too many positive aspects to be judged a failure. There is an atmospheric quality to the production and arrangements that makes short listens very rewarding. Undeniably heavy on hooks, each song is capable of making the austere, skeletal production seem triumphant, never sacrificing eccentricity for commercial appeal. It’s only on longer listens that the negative characteristics become subtly apparent. There is a sense of each song having to include a new demonstration of studio trickery at the expense of melodic innovation. Therefore, while it can’t be called a truly triumphant record, Youth Novels has enough to mark out Lykke Li as a dissenting voice in the female pop pantheon. If it has one effect, it is to disqualify any notion of her as an heir to the faux-naïve role countless others have stepped into in the past, at the same time allowing a glimpse past that defining voice into a promising future for devotees of leftfield pop.
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