Youth Novels

Sweden has found a niche for itself as the backroom of modern pop. Its production teams provide the engineers for global Top 40 sounds; in men like Jens Lekman and Johan Agebjörn it produces theorists of pop classicism; and its own top-sellers, like Robyn and now Lykke Li, are welcomed into collections which otherwise carefully sidestep the commercial. So it's not wholly surprising that Youth Novels, Li's first full-length album, has the air of the workshop about it. The careful, spartan production-- by Bjorn Yttling of Peter Björn and John-- asks listeners to do more work than most pop records allow for. At its frequent best, the record manages to sketch out widescreen hit songs with a remarkable economy of means. At its more occasional worst, the tracks feel frustratingly underthought.

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