Lykke Li: Youth Novels : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Would Abba have posted a YouTube video of themselves busking on a Stockholm street with a toy piano? Well, that idea works for their oddball homegirl Lykke Li, a charming, globe-trotting hippie kid whose Abba-rific debut shows how dance pop and quirky indie invention can co-exist happily. Producer-collaborator Björn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John helps to make this record even more irresistible than his own group's debut. "I'm Good, I'm Gone" puts a New Wave spin on the chuck-a-chuck-a groove of Lee Dorsey's 1966 hit "Working in a Coal Mine." A quietly intoxicating electropulse drives the reluctant lover's confession in "Little Bit" while Li memorably rhymes "legs apart" with "tainted heart." The singer's frosty squeak is a limited instrument, but she works it, mixing adorable playground scats with spoken-word whispers and parched coos that barely sketch her sugary melodies. The arrangements also dress simple tunes in surprising ways, with odd choral bits and percolating percussion webs that should tease movement from even reluctant hips. No surprise that, as YouTube confirms, Lykke Li is also a freaky dancer.