May Can’t Come Soon Enough

Lykke Li told NME that her new album is coming in May. No title yet, no exact date. Just May. I’ll take it.

She called it the final part of a trilogy that began with Youth Novels—guilt, shame, hurt, pride, confusion, the whole internal weather system of feeling too much in a world that keeps asking you to feel less. I always feel like I’ve been slightly misunderstood, she said. I really feel like I’ve found my voice. Which is a remarkable thing to say when your first two records already sounded like someone who had located their voice precisely, then dismantled it on purpose just to see what the ruins looked like.

There’s a particular loneliness in how Lykke Li makes music. Not the performed loneliness of a hundred singer-songwriters working a grief angle, but something more structural—like the songs were built in an empty room and haven’t quite adjusted to being heard. Wounded Rhymes destroyed several of my winters. I played I Follow Rivers until it stopped being a song and became something more like a condition. What she does with tempo and restraint, the way a track can feel like it’s been holding its breath the entire time—I haven’t heard anyone else do it the same way.

She pushed back on being called a pop artist, which feels both right and slightly beside the point. The best pop music is always more than pop music. Hers certainly is. May, then. Fine. I can wait. I’m already making room.