Dorks And Losers

With all of the hoopla for female artists com­ing out of the United King­dom (Amy Wine­house, Adele), it would be easy for Swedish import Lykke Li (real name is Li Lykke Tim­o­tej Zachris­son) to get lost in the shuffle.

To much antic­i­pa­tion, the 22-year-old’s debut album Youth Nov­els has finally been released in the United States after tit­il­lat­ing audi­ences abroad for months already. Her rise might not have been as rapid or exotic as Duffy or as well-publicized as Wine­house, but Li endured her fair share of lumps and bruises along the way to being both an indie dar­ling and hope­fully a main­stream star.

Dance­able music is what helps set many of these recent female artists. Lykke Li is no excep­tion. Her keep-on-moving atti­tude partly stems from the con­stant mov­ing that her fam­ily did when she was young. She even­tu­ally found her­self in New York City per­form­ing at small venues and open mic nights and, for­tu­nately, back in Swe­den to work with Bjorn Yttling (of Peter, Bjorn and John) on her music.

From the obvi­ous “Dance, Dance, Dance” (which is ded­i­cated to those that don’t like to dance) to the supremely catchy “I’m Good, I’m Gone” to highly infec­tious group anthem “Break­ing It Up,” Li keeps the music going and her feet mov­ing through­out much of Youth Nov­els. Even the open­ing “Melodies & Desires” entices you to move your body with its lul­laby rhythm and lov­ing lyrics.

I refrained from men­tion­ing any­thing sen­sual in that lat­ter song despite the less-than-subtle lines of any­time love­mak­ing (“You’ll be the rhythm and I’ll be the beat / Then I’ll be the rhythm and you’ll be the beat / And love, the shore­line, where you and I meet”). There really is no short­age of sex­u­al­ity, from either the highly sug­ges­tive “Let If Fall” or the hyp­not­i­cally erotic “Lit­tle Bit” (lis­ten to the Lov­ing Hand Remix). And any con­fi­dent man shouldn’t lis­ten to “Com­plaint Department.”

Lykke Li is never hes­i­tant in her music, going from song to song poised in her abil­ity to suc­cess­fully tra­verse from genre to genre and style to style while always mov­ing her feet.

[pho­tos via Sneak Attack Media]
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Track list:

1. Melodies & Desires
2. Dance, Dance, Dance
3. I’m Good, I’m Gone
4. Let It Fall
5. My Love
6. Tonight
7. Lit­tle Bit
8. Hang­ing High
9. This Trum­pet In My Head
10. Com­plaint Depart­ment
11. Break­ing It Up
12. Every­body But Me
13. Time Flies
14. Win­dow Blues

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