Album Review Lykke Li - EYEYE

Lykke Li’s noir avant-pop takes an increasingly introspective turn with palindromic audiovisual venture ‘EYEYE’. Swapping the peppy choruses of ‘so sad so sexy’ and ‘I Never Learn’ for a more subdued style, the Swede tacks to a spareness reflected in the album’s development - recorded in her LA apartment with vocals captured via a no-frills handheld drum mic. The polish of earlier records remains, however, elegiac electronic moments trickling through ‘Highway To Your Heart’ and ‘Carousel’, and ‘Happy Hurts’ revisiting the grandiose dream-pop of past work in its suite of harmonies, its glacial synth shared with closing track ‘ü&i’. Lacking the previous high energy sweep, ‘EYEYE’ offers a poignant exploration of lust, attraction, attachment and rejection set to a self-proclaimed “hyper sensory landscape,” which the singer renders through her usual baroque filter. Coinciding with a series of one-minute videos, the eight-track collection finds its voice through an ever more personal lens, one that dials down the familiar ignitable fare in favour of intricate ambient spread. In doing so, variation on past cues and themes are offered, sonically pared down yet expansive in concept – an effort that adds new facets and angles to Lykke Li’s art.