On her full-length debut, Lykke Li sounds like
she's been waiting to refashion the classical torch song her whole life. Youth
Novels is
all teasing and heartbreak, with production (from Peter Bjorn & John's
Bjorn Yttling) that plays on empty spaces as much as well-chosen backing. Li's
voice is spacier and breathier than her forebears': Her whisper floats in the
upper registers, refusing virtuosity. She's lewder, too: The first single, "Little
Bit," has her promising "for you I keep my legs apart," though the rhyme brings
her back to a familiar image, a "tainted heart." Her suggestive instrumentation
drives the songs home with minimal resources: "Little Bit" lives up to its
name, using little more than a bassline and a time-keeping percussive section
for the verses. It's a template of sparseness more or less followed throughout.
Li wants to make an album, not just a series of future singles, which leads to
ill-advised connective tissue: A spoken-word intro and "This Trumpet In My
Head," a moody trumpet solo and acoustic guitar, are hardly as haunting as
intended. Mostly, though, Li adeptly straddles the line between instant
gratification and minimalist smarts.