FEATURE
In this magazine, Lykke Li appears as a timeless beauty, captured in black and white. The photograph, taken by Erik Madigan Heck on the eve of the release of Li's third album, "I Never Learn," wraps the musician in a tidy veneer of serenity and contemplation as constructed by a solitary male gaze — or, simply, the necessarily two-dimensional lens of a photographer.
This representation neither confirms nor contradicts the ongoing, frequently clashing public narratives of Li that began in 2008 with the debut of her freshman album "Youth Novels" and evolved with "Wounded Rhymes," released in 2011. She has regularly been described as childlike, introverted, interchangeable and depressingly emo. And her music has been pronounced pop, indie, electronic and gothic garage rock. Depending upon the source, it is confessional and bittersweet, danceable and dirty.
In person, the musician is soft-spoken, intense and quietly polite. She exhibits a gravitational pull more analogous to that of a black hole than an orbiting sun. Which is to say, rather than possessing the fragility to which she is so often ascribed, she reveals a convinced, raw and decidedly somber character. It is devoid of common pretenses and layered with morbidly magnetic complexities.
These dissonant characterizations may be cultural; Li's family is from Sweden, where frank communication and a sober temperament are typical. Or, she suggests, it may be an inborn state. Li's recent interest in neuroscience has taught her that some people just produce more serotonin, whereas she has always been markedly melancholic and intensely sensitive. As far back as she can remember — as documented in poems written at the age of ten — she has felt misunderstood, sought relief from the persistent pain of life and viewed art as a bridge to something better.
Her pursuit of "better" has evolved into a nomadic life lived on the knife-edge of expression and escapism, a balancing act colored with self-described self-destruction. If her past albums have been exercises in exorcising this damage, "I Never Learn," despite its contrary title, distills the wisdom these encounters have imparted. As Li explains, "I embarked on this journey years and years ago and I'm still on that path, digging deeper and deeper and trying to find the bare essentials. That's also age and maturity. You could liken the album to a really complex wine; it only has a few subtle tones and it took me a long time to get there. I always felt more than I could deliver. This time it is a little more cracked open and vulnerable."
Like Li's previous releases, the album remains rich with questions of love and loneliness, but the songs are no longer vengeful battle cries. They are bereft ballads of surrender, questioning societal expectations of partnership, happiness and womanhood: a preoccupation at the forefront of Li's mind. She has embraced the productivity of the suffering and sadness experienced after losing "safe love, unconditional love, beautiful love ... not the fucked up or unrequited love I felt deeply as a teenager."
Devoid of the nostalgia and fetishization of an ingénue, "I Never Learn" is a slow striptease, revealing the growth demanded by the weight of truth. It is, Li says, the result of a sort of epiphany that is eloquently expressed by a quote often attributed to the author and poet Anaïs Nin: "The day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
By developing beyond the restrictions of public perceptions, by peeling off the superfice of safety and by laying naked her failures and fantasies, Li has evolved her artwork from an acoustic self-portrait that can be easily digested and captured — by a profile, picture or preconception — into an alchemic mirror in which the listener is invited to confront his or her own biases and dark demons.
PUBLISHED IN CREEM MAGAZINE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIK MADIGAN HECK
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FEATURE
In this magazine, Lykke Li appears as a timeless beauty, captured in black and white. The photograph, taken by Erik Madigan Heck on the eve of the release of Li's third album, "I Never Learn," wraps the musician in a tidy veneer of serenity and contemplation as constructed by a solitary male gaze — or, simply, the necessarily two-dimensional lens of a photographer.
This representation neither confirms nor contradicts the ongoing, frequently clashing public narratives of Li that began in 2008 with the debut of her freshman album "Youth Novels" and evolved with "Wounded Rhymes," released in 2011. She has regularly been described as childlike, introverted, interchangeable and depressingly emo. And her music has been pronounced pop, indie, electronic and gothic garage rock. Depending upon the source, it is confessional and bittersweet, danceable and dirty.
In person, the musician is soft-spoken, intense and quietly polite. She exhibits a gravitational pull more analogous to that of a black hole than an orbiting sun. Which is to say, rather than possessing the fragility to which she is so often ascribed, she reveals a convinced, raw and decidedly somber character. It is devoid of common pretenses and layered with morbidly magnetic complexities.
These dissonant characterizations may be cultural; Li's family is from Sweden, where frank communication and a sober temperament are typical. Or, she suggests, it may be an inborn state. Li's recent interest in neuroscience has taught her that some people just produce more serotonin, whereas she has always been markedly melancholic and intensely sensitive. As far back as she can remember — as documented in poems written at the age of ten — she has felt misunderstood, sought relief from the persistent pain of life and viewed art as a bridge to something better.
Her pursuit of "better" has evolved into a nomadic life lived on the knife-edge of expression and escapism, a balancing act colored with self-described self-destruction. If her past albums have been exercises in exorcising this damage, "I Never Learn," despite its contrary title, distills the wisdom these encounters have imparted. As Li explains, "I embarked on this journey years and years ago and I'm still on that path, digging deeper and deeper and trying to find the bare essentials. That's also age and maturity. You could liken the album to a really complex wine; it only has a few subtle tones and it took me a long time to get there. I always felt more than I could deliver. This time it is a little more cracked open and vulnerable."
Like Li's previous releases, the album remains rich with questions of love and loneliness, but the songs are no longer vengeful battle cries. They are bereft ballads of surrender, questioning societal expectations of partnership, happiness and womanhood: a preoccupation at the forefront of Li's mind. She has embraced the productivity of the suffering and sadness experienced after losing "safe love, unconditional love, beautiful love ... not the fucked up or unrequited love I felt deeply as a teenager."
Devoid of the nostalgia and fetishization of an ingénue, "I Never Learn" is a slow striptease, revealing the growth demanded by the weight of truth. It is, Li says, the result of a sort of epiphany that is eloquently expressed by a quote often attributed to the author and poet Anaïs Nin: "The day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
By developing beyond the restrictions of public perceptions, by peeling off the superfice of safety and by laying naked her failures and fantasies, Li has evolved her artwork from an acoustic self-portrait that can be easily digested and captured — by a profile, picture or preconception — into an alchemic mirror in which the listener is invited to confront his or her own biases and dark demons.
PUBLISHED IN CREEM MAGAZINE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIK MADIGAN HECK
view more
