Eccentric world of indie pop duchess is something you can take a sneak peak in just by looking at the cover of her album I Never Learn. Behind an effective visual identity, there are a lot of scars caused by emotional turbulences. Traces of painful breakup are packed into a solid pop album. One day I meet Lykke Li, I will tell her I would never breakup with her.
Contrary to Youth Novels and Wounded Rhymes, her third variation leads to double catharsis: experimentation is softened by domination of piano, acoustic guitar and violin while the usual melodramatic cliché is developed into a context of an artistic idea. Monotony of the expected narrative full of pain, hurt, yearning, trust, love, pride, loneliness, etc is compensated with irony and rationality. Lykke sings about how she discovered that life goes on when someone you love goes away.
Lykke Li did not make an album about fear of loss, disappointment or giving up. She affirms the risk of opening to the loved one. Irony is motif of interpersonal relationships: the feeling of mutual love is not possible to experience without the loss and suffering and the pain caused by a breakup is an evidence of emotional intensity. Complications occur when we give up on searching for new people, as Lykke concludes. When we are not able to feel passion or to build trust, to take a risk or take a chance. Scars are alarms. Still, I Never Learn teaches you to let go of your shield. Everyone needs to stop confronting vulnerability with rationality. It is possible to learn from mistakes and begin again.
Simply put, we won’t learn that we can always be hurt If we are not open to love in the same way in which we will not learn that we can love time and time again If we give up after the first failure.
I Never Learn might not contain hits such as I Follow Rivers and Get Some, but thanks to Bjorn Ytting and Greg Kurstin (her producers), the album does not lack dream pop and power pop ballades. Title song opens the album and then you get the most beautiful song on the record – No Rest For The Wicked. Just Like A Dream and Never Gonna Love Again represent strong dream pop ballades, while Silverline introduces electronic elements. Vocal ability is amazing in Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone.
I will always return to this album, just as I will never return to my ex lovers.
