I Never Learn

Lykke Li’s third album I Never Learn plays like it was recorded during a storm. Sparse piano and acoustic guitar arrangements guide Li’s reverberated voice through each track’s sullen and atmospheric verses, then collide abruptly with waves of predelayed noise launched by thundering kick drums. The result is the Swedish singer-songwriter’s strongest work yet, a record that – threatening to drown us in sorrow without ever opening the floodgates – articulates the attempts a betrayed lover makes to retain pride when wounded.

With the notable exceptions of ‘Gunshot’ and ‘No Rest For The Wicked’, the album is generally lacking in the hooks department. Her dreamy melodies tend to limp where they promise to soar. But the album’s generally melancholic tone suggests Li had no intention of building tension to a point of irresistible climax the way she did with ‘I Follow Rivers’. I Never Learn is a solemn meditation upon the bleakness of iterative heartbreak, one that seeks not to romanticise the wounded lover’s experience but to carve it, brutally stripped of embellishment, into stone. Therefore it’s not at all surprising to find that, while Li’s every word is delivered with aching, bittersweet melody, radio-friendly refrains are in short supply.

Lyrically and sonically, I Never Learn is an album of mood rather than narrative. While lines such as “Be the night and I will be your shining light” (from ‘Silver Line’) possess all the emotional clarity of a Dolly Parton lyric, they bear none of the story. We are situated not in a landscape but in a mindset, and – as when in love – we are given no map by which to navigate things logically. Vocally, Li manages to whimper and shiver but powerfully so, treating her dark subject matter with pained coldness rather than tearful melodrama. Her singing has something of a rain-like quality as it drips and pours over trickles and torrents of ambience. Such evocations of nature, which is as rhythmically volatile as both the love tearing her apart and the structure of the songs through which that loss is expressed, can perhaps be attributed to the prominent use of organic instrumentation on the album, which strikes a contrast with the synthesized stylisation of her previous work.

Once a chirpy, Scandi-accented popstress, Lykke Li now writes songs in the timeless minor keys of the all-American country ballad. She retains her unique appeal through the gothic direction in which her production (with Greg Kurstin and Bjorn Yttling) takes her soft, simple ditties. Rather than the lyrics or melodies, it is the production of this record –  the atmospheric orchestral pads, the wet space afforded Li’s warm and fragile voice, and the jumping of those pounding bass drums to the front of the mixing queue –  that leaves a truly indelible impression of sadness upon the listener’s ear.

While many writers and producers of downbeat pop feel it sufficient to let a heartfelt vocal carry the weight of a song’s emotion, I Never Learn exhibits a sensitivity to the profound evocations that can be achieved through the simplest of additive and subtractive production decisions. By stripping down her sound to its bare minimum (on ‘Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone’) but making sure to pump the bleeding heart every once in a while with slow, hard chorus beats, such as those of the unforgettable ‘Gunshot’, Li captures her melancholic sentiment perfectly through managing an ideal balance of release and restraint, proving that less can be more in the process.