Lykke Li - The Afterparty

Lykke Li has always dealt in sadness: grief and heartbreak turned into soaring pop, from her career-high ‘I Never Learn’ to ‘so sad so sexy’. Heck, she even had a song called ‘Sadness Is a Blessing’. So a cursory glance at the track list of her sixth album ‘The Afterparty’, with song titles like ‘Lucky Again’, ‘So Happy I Could Die’ and ‘Not Gon Cry’, might seem to signal an abrupt shift. Has the Swedish singer gone full-on euphoric joy? Well, not quite. Instead, Lykke’s turning hopelessness into “celebratory revenge”, she says, trading the “love addiction” of her earlier records for something altogether more “existential”. 

It seems she’s aware of these prevailing perceptions when she sings on ‘Famous Last Words’: “I’ll show you what it takes to fill the void / To write a sad song.” She goes on: “I’ve been a bad boy / Made such a mess / I had to crash and burn to tell the tale”. You see, instead of purely blue ballads, there’s more of a bite this time around. These are more like late-night missives: tales of early-morning heart-to-hearts, crack-of-dawn confessions and realisations that often come when you should have probably gone to bed.

On ‘Sick Of Love’, she channels lost love and resentment into a far cockier rebuttal: “Television pretty, I know you got the wrong girl… / You’re gonna want me back… I’ll make you beg for it.” ‘Future Fear’ is all about seizing the moment: “I’m not young / It’s just late / Kiss me / The sun’s going down / It’s on my tongue”, while closing track ‘Euphoria’ champions picking yourself back up and heading back out.

Sonically, Lykke is in fine form too. There are Balearic-like rhythms, 17-piece string sections, triumphant hooks and a sense of catharsis that seeps its way into the music too. ‘Lucky Again’ opens with a cinematic orchestral sweep, while, later on, ‘Knife In The Heart’ descends into a tangle of what sounds like distorted bagpipes. Perhaps the main flaw is that ‘The Afterparty’ feels all too brief, running to under 25 minutes in total. Just like a big night out, or indeed its afters, the record is dizzying but flies by too fast and leaves you wanting just a tiny bit more to savour.