Since breaking out with her debut album Youth Novels in 2008, internationally acclaimed Swedish artist Lykke Li has carved a unique musical path throughout her almost two decade career. Known for her fearless intimacy and intensely personal lyrics, her music dreamily drifts through genres from indie pop to a modern electronic sound, often delving into the darker aspects of love, longing and heartbreak.
The Afterparty is Li’s sixth studio album and her first since 2022’s raw, stripped back and lo-fi EYEYE, which abandoned the polished pop sound of 2018’s so sad so sexy for a return to, and a reckoning with, her earlier obsession with romantic fantasies through an immersive audiovisual experience.
Where EYEYE felt like a culmination of Li’s career to that point, described in her own words as her “breakup with the breakup album”, The Afterparty seems more like a genuine maturing. A reinvention of who Li is as a woman and an artist, the album feels soaked in an acceptance of the realities of life, confronting the spectres of mortality and impermanence with the wisdom only age and experience can bring. Li sees this new album as her finally letting go of the addiction to love that has threaded its way through her music for the past 20 years and fully embracing what she refers to as her “existential era”.
At a brisk 24 minutes, the album is a taut, exacting cut of arresting melodies and Balearic percussion. Upbeat and often joyful, the optimism of the music is frequently in contrast with the clear eyed desperation and ruthless clarity of its storytelling. The Afterparty deals with the messier, chaotic and more embarrassing aspects of life. As Lykke Li says of the new album: “I find that we’re in an era where everyone is talking about, ‘My higher self,’… Fuck that. This is an album dealing with your lower self: your need for revenge, your shame, despair. It’s a journey through all the disgusting, sticky emotions. This is a journey through the night, hoping to find dawn—and it’s the dawn of yourself, too.”
Though the lyrics can be unflinching in their interrogation of this ‘lower self’, there is still a sense of hope to be found, but it is a hope suffused with more realistic expectations. The album feels like an exploration, a search for a clearer understanding of who Li is at this stage of her life, and by the end one feels like she has finally come to some form of acceptance, if not a definitive conclusion.
The maximalist arrangements of The Afterparty stand in stark contrast to the stripped back minimalism of the previous album (EYEYE was recorded entirely in Li’s bedroom), with multiple drummers and singers, a smorgasbord of instruments, and a 17 piece string section all featuring throughout the production. An apt metaphor perhaps for Lykke Li herself as she becomes more open to the world, of getting out of her head, letting go of the obsessions (and demons) that have characterised her music until now, and framing her emotional journey through a wider and more philosophical lens.
The album kicks off with Not Gon Cry, a clear statement of thematic intent that immediately shows us the path along which this new record will lead us. “I’m not gon cry, no, no, not gon waste, my last tears on you” Li sings as the song comes to a close – she has deeper concerns to deal with now, bigger questions she needs answering. The Afterparty is Li’s search for greater meaning to this life, a search that requires a break from that which has previously defined her music.
Recently released singles Lucky Again and the sublime Sick Of Love are highlights of a record brimming with memorable hooks, melancholic lyrical abstractions and standout tracks. Personal favourite Future Fear is a dreamy interlude in the middle of the album that feels like a fleeting moment of half wakefulness before drifting back into sleep – the way a memory feels as it begins to slip from one’s grasp and starts to decay. High pitched child-like vocals and distorted intonations of love give way to a brief but beautiful soft acoustic lullaby of almost nonsense lyrics (“see you now, future fear, feel you close to mе, I’m in your heart, astronaut”) that nevertheless perfectly complement the dreaminess of the music.
As one of the more catchy and straightforward pop tunes on the album Knife in the Heart acts as a great illustration of the tension between the music and lyrics that is found throughout the record as a whole. One could view the juxtaposition between such bright and joyful pop beats and the darker lyrical content (“you can take, yeah, take what you need, what you need, nothing will last, go ahead, you can break, you can spit, you can walk on me, go ahead”) as an exercise in cynical irony, but the defiant refrain of “you can’t hurt me, hurt me, hurt me, yeah” that closes out the chorus reframes this contradiction as an acknowledgement of life’s rich kaleidoscope of emotional experience and the understanding that by choosing to face it head on there will always be reason to be hopeful for the future. It may be a flimsy hope, but it is still something worth celebrating.
This sentiment is emphasised more subtly in the beautifully melodic and quietly hopeful album closer Euphoria. Stripped back to a simple acoustic guitar and the gentle accompaniment of sparse piano, mournful violin, and a faintly shimmering percussion that bleeds in to the mix at the outro, the song feels like the thematic culmination of all that has come before and the perfect note upon which to end – “baby, I will take your sorrow, on my shoulder, we can borrow, euphoria, though it won’t last, hallelujah, at least we knew ya, euphoria”.
There have been hints that this may be Lykke Li’s final album, a suggestion the artist has only alluded to but so far refused to confirm or deny. Regardless of Li’s future in music there is no denying that, though The Afterparty will likely not be her final album, it certainly feels like the closing chapter of the book of her career so far and the perfect companion to debut album Youth Novels released nearly half her lifetime ago. From here who knows where she will go or what her next project will look like, but i’m excited to find out.
The Afterparty is released on May 8. Presave here.