I Never Learn

There is something effortlessly contagious and opulent about her melodies and cozy rhythmic kink. [No. 109, p.57]

I Never Learn is a brave album--it could very well alienate more fans than it brings in. But Li's songwriting is exquisite in its vulnerability; she has never sounded more sure of her aesthetic than she does in her most miserable moment. Like Beyonce's self-titled LP last year, this is a "grown-woman" album, but one focused on the sobering end of youth rather than the blissful beginnings of adulthood.

Each song feels carefully placed, but many end abruptly, leaving something unfinished.

The nine songs gathered on her third record beautifully convey heartache, loss and desolation. It’s not just in the songwriting--although, that is, of course, wonderful. It’s also in the production.

This is 100% bittersweet, but it's honest, it's genuine and we see Li's true colours, hopefully shining back on us.

A compact, nine-song, 32-minute album that suggests an artist just hitting her stride, Li's new album seems to have pinpointed the locus of power in her voice.

We’re used to breakup albums that assume you just want to crawl into a hole and die, but I Never Learn is for the times when heartbreak is so life-affirming that you want to share the feeling with the world.

The words would be perhaps somewhat unremarkable without the grandiose sweep of sonic majesty that surrounds them.

Anyone seduced by the standout Wounded Rhymes track Sadness Is A blessing will be left winded by the even more sorrow-stricken I Never Learn. [Jun 2014, p.92]

Those who had their hearts set on another batch of coy, cloudy electro-pop from the Swedish singer/songwriter might consider the song [Gunshot!] a bummer, but for the rest of us, it and the other eight tracks that comprise I Never Learn make for a stirring, pristinely rendered expression of heartache.

Every track on this album is relatable and takes us on an emotional journey through the steps of a breakup, which in Li’s interpretation seems to be frustration, pain and ultimately loneliness.

Li virtually proves to herself that pop need not be soulless and manufactured.

She sounds every bit the wounded princess, unwilling to let anyone help her pick up the pieces as she delivers these lovely, sad songs from behind a shroud of her own making.

This is harsh, unyielding stuff, and most of this jolting album contains more the same. On her two previous albums, Lykke Li has been something of a floating presence, but everything about this album is intensely grounded.

Though her personal tragedy has been transformed into an affecting record of real beauty, one truly hopes Li’s next chapter isn’t quite so agonising.

Just like love itself, it’s an album you will fall for despite (or even because of) its flaws and imperfections as much as the real moments of truth and beauty it provides.

You'd struggle to find a more affecting ode to the selfishness of love than this. [Jun 2014, p.80]

[A] taut, intense collection of songs.

More so than Wounded Rhymes or Youth Novels, I Never Learn is a record for a radio-loving crowd who wouldn’t have a problem with the lack of variety in content matter or the relative sameness in sound and composition.

Despite the finality of what’s supposed to be the third installment of a three-part series, I Never Learn promises more in the future as Lykke Li keeps moving along her own singular path, personally and artistically.

It's quite frankly perfect pop, and despite its occasional missteps, that's something Li's trilogy has flaunted in abundance.

Though she's largely eschewing Youth Novels's bubbly synth-pop and Wounded Rhymes's slick power ballads for simpler arrangements and derelict instrumentation, Li still manages to make the ramshackle music of I Never Learn sound grand and, perhaps more impressively, inject a kind of dark romanticism into her depictions of crippling separation.

The album's Spector-ish arrangements, thick with multitracked vocals and densely layered instruments, don't always add as much as they should.

When I Never Learn aims for pop, it's the hazy Shangri-Las variety; the melodies are Li's lushest to date, but the smoke never clears around them.

I Never Learn is an album about love, but not a record to love.

You are either in the mood for this depth of wallowing or you are not.

I Never Learn works best in the smallest doses, despite its brevity, because it's as one-paced as a fading lower-division central defender, and that pace is sluggish.

I Never Learn is by no means a failure--the highs are grand when they come--but it has a tendency towards bombast and shallow self indulgence that sees it edge dangerously close to the fringes of mediocrity.

Heard consecutively, these songs sound disappointingly like one another, and while one good belter about the pain of unrequited love is a blessing, nine in a row turns out to be real drag.

As a whole, though, I Never Learn wallows too much. [Jun 2014, p.119]