Marcel Winatschek

Youth Novels and Whatever Comes After

Youth Novels came out in 2008 and I treated it like a private religion. The particular strain of Scandinavian melancholy Lykke Li bottled on that debut—sparse, pained, strangely euphoric—arrived at exactly the right moment. M83’s Saturdays = Youth was passing itself off as background music while being genuinely colossal. Natasha Khan’s Two Suns closed out that era like a strange dream you can’t shake. Then the good ones drifted somewhere quieter, the way they tend to.

Six years after that first record rewired parts of my brain, Lykke Li announced a third album: I Never Learn, arriving in May 2014. The short trailer is enough—thirty seconds of dark, orchestral ache—and I remember exactly what the appeal was. Some voices reach you in a way that’s hard to explain without sounding embarrassing.

The title feels right. The heartbreak was always the point, worn openly, almost defiantly. I Never Learn is honest in a way most artists wouldn’t dare be this far into a career. Good.