Lykke Li - What Rhymes with 'Wound'?

Just a couple of cymbals from a one-woman band

In the world of Swedish music vehicles, ABBA would be like a Volvo: steady and solid, yet luxurious, a name brand that states, “Show me your extended service and I’ll show you my drive shaft.” Robyn and Ace of Bass are more like a Saab: youthful and sporty, made for androgynous close-cropped hair that can survive a good wind-whipping.  Then there’s The Hives and Soundtrack of Our Lives, the rock equivalent of muscular models like Koenigsegg and Jösse Car. So what to make of Lykke Li, the otherworldly electro-indie muse who just released her second full-length album, “Wounded Rhymes”? Maybe more like GOX Teknik, a high-performance kit car replica, with a touch of oddball industrial development and just a hint of Teen Spirit. 

Again produced by Björn Yttling of fellow Swedes Peter, Björn and John, “Wounded Rhymes” retains Li’s skewed pop leanings but slinks into darker territory, a place she calls "hypnotic, psychotic and more primal" (ma, I think I’ve found the girl I want to marry!) For writing and recording purposes, she fled the gloomy confines of Stockholm and relocated to one of the few places that rival Sweden in existential psychological mind-warping. Yes, Los Angeles. Darkness, light and “CSI”-meets-the Black Dahlia dread – it’s all there on the new disc, as is Li’s uniquely displaced Scandi-Goth sensibility. Remember, this is a gal who spent ages six to 11 living on a mountaintop in Portugal.  She literally had her head in the clouds, and the skies were probably threatening.

Tribal percussion resonates throughout, especially on tracks like “Get Some,” in which Li sings like a gene-splice hybrid of Bjork, Shakira, Tori Amos and Lady GaGa starring in “I Walked with a Zombie.” In “I Follow Rivers” Li chases her man through a spooky, indie-winter version of the Olympic cross-country ski pursuit, her echo-laden vocals somewhere between girl group optimism and Stockholm whore house realism. “Silent My Song” offers a dirge-like procession appropriate for both a funeral and a “Twilight” vampire spin-the-bottle party. The ominous sounds of “Love Out of Lust” swell to ethereal chamber pop, while “Rich Kids Blues” features spiraling keyboards that would make Vanilla Fudge proud (odd, considering the only place Li has likely encountered vanilla fudge in her life is at the Stockholm Baskin Robbins). 

Best of all are Li’s vocals, which wrap around your head like deep-tissue massage. Lykee Li is well on her way to being the artist that all the weird kids can agree on, and if that’s not a name brand in the making, what is?