“Youth Knows No Pain”
from the album Wounded Rhymes
2011
iTunes
Wounded Rhymes, the second album from the Swedish singer, documents a break-up without sugarcoating. Li plugs her ice-queen longing into dramatic arrangements informed by late ’50s doo-wop and early ’60s Phil Spector. Her producer and co-songwriter Bjorn Yttling (of the Swedish rock band Peter, Bjorn and John) keeps things from sounding like mere revivalism. If anything, Li’s vision of teen-pop longing focuses on just how twisted lost love can be. “C’mon, cut yourself to pieces,” she sings on “Youth Knows No Pain,” in which she uses plastic surgery as a metaphor for the wrenching changes caused by an affair.
As a singer she’s matured, moving past the chirpiness of her 2008 debut, Youth Novels, into a more commanding sense of drama. But she’s not wallowing in the pain; instead she almost seems to revel in it on “Unrequited Love” and “Sadness is a Blessing,” in part because the melodies allow her to soar. She finds a weird solace in some of the more uptempo tracks, sometimes pitting her voice against little more than tribal drum beats. On “Get Some,” she strips away the bubblegum from the Strangeloves’ “I Want Candy” and turns it into something far more sinister.
As song cycles go, Wounded Rhymes couldn’t end on a more devastating note with “Silent My Song” – Li’s voice is stacked to sound like a choir singing from inside a church. Or maybe it’s a tomb.