Moonsorrow - Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa: A

"Huuto"

Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa isn’t your standard folk metal album. At over an hour and with just seven tracks, Moonsorrow’s ­­­­seventh release is made of incredibly long songs, and none of them are particularly concerned with forming discernable parts or even establishing concrete structures. No, instead, Moonsorrow have a riff per song, and they play the shit out of that riff, making up the majority of the length of Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa’s tracks, many of which exceed the ten-minute mark.

And, yet, somehow, it works beautifully. I don’t know if it’s the riffs or my admiration for the sheer chutzpah it takes to fill a sixteen minute song with little more than one guitar line and some instrumental accompaniment, but Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa is never grating, and that sixteen minute song, “Huuto” is the album’s fantastic centerpiece that breezes by like a song less than half its length. If you think this is a dubious justification for the quality of an album, then you obviously haven’t heard these riffs. Those guitar lines become grander and more encompassing with each iteration. They build and build until you have no other recourse but to hear them at full volume and sing the notes to yourself with a seemingly endless intensity.

There are more notable aspects to Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa. Henri "Trollhorn" Urponpoika Sorvali is a graduate of the Six Feet Under school of vomit/sing, but like the best melodic death metal albums, his psychobabble is far from center stage. The band has some semblance of arrangement at times, perhaps diverging into an instrumental passage before riding faithfully back into that pivotal guitar line. The album has a post-apocalyptic narrative to it akin to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (“As shadows we walk in the land of the dead” goes the album title’s translation), but the only evidence you will hear of it is in the interludes between songs, in which a man walks through tactile brush, conjuring images of The Road’s main character and his thankless journey to the shore. The songs, themselves, are far too epic to be thought of as soundtracks to vast wastelands; battles between gods or a treacherous march would be more appropriate.

The only negative aspect of Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa is that, in first track, “Tähdetön,” Moonsorrow utilize the mid-song folk dalliance that I’ve noted as hackneyed in other metal releases this year from MyGrain and Omnium Gatherum. Other than that, Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa is pure ear candy that could prove to be an even greater grower due to the mounting nature of the album’s arrangements. It’s no surprise that one of the first great metal albums of the year is a slow builder (This has been a slow building kinda year, ya know?), and the more time spent with it is more time spent having intelligent and affecting metal wash over your pleasure centers.

Moonsorrow - Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa: A

Amplifier - The Octopus: B-

"Minion's Song"

For The Octopus to be truly worth your time, its length would literally need to cut in half. At about two hours, the album is Manchester’s Amplifier serving up a plate of prog rock that’s really prog rock in length only. The first musical instrument heard on the album, at the end of the positively virile introduction, “The Runner,” is a piano, which is later revealed to be manned by a singer with a strangely ordinary voice playing what would appear to be a very ordinary song. Sel Balamir, that singer, resembles The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon for sounding particularly self-referential and particularly British, qualities that do not fit with the vast scope of The Octopus. That first actual song, “Minion’s Song,” sounds like a wry send-up of Industrial Age theatrics that Hannon did very well on his 2010 effort, Bang Goes the Knighthood. The difference between Amplifier and The Divine Comedy, though, is that Hannon can get his point across in less than four minutes; “Minion’s Song” needs almost six. This is a trend that becomes quite prevalent as The Octopus continues.

To Amplifier’s credit, The Octopus is not a customary concept album that’s bloated with senseless instrumentation or an intrusive narrative. However, if you’re going to have me listen to an album whose length spans the entirety of the Ramones ‘70’s output, there needs to be something for me to latch onto. There are some cool parts to momentarily treasure (I could name them, but nitpicking with an album this large would take up far too much space), but, for those who even finish the damn thing, Amplifier will come off sounding like a wannabe Porcupine Tree that thought they could one-up the prog factor in all the wrong ways. I’ve never felt trapped listening to an album, but, when you realize somewhere between “Trading Dark On the Stock Exchange” and “The Sick Rose” (which both might as well be recordings of appliances humming they’re so unmemorable) that you’ve still got another hour to go, it’s hard not to wonder how many better things you could be doing with those sixty minutes, an option of which may very well be doing nothing.

The Octopus doesn’t receive an F, because, on a track-by-track basis, it is a lot easier to digest, and, thus, a lot easier to appreciate. However, it’s rather daunting to be placed in front of those irrevocable two hours when planning to listen to it, and I’m here to tell you that, unfortunately, it’s as tough getting through them as it appears. Amplifier have the potential to be an excellent rock band, as evidenced by The Octopus, and the album certainly sounds better when you give it the chance, but it’s an unfortunate possibility that so many will choose not to hear it, because of its rather unnecessary length.

Amplifier - The Octopus: B-

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo: A-

"Society Is My Friend"

It’s coming to the close of the little music festival you and your friends had been organizing for a couple of months, and the final band that was supposed to play folk-influenced marimba (or at least that’s what it said they played on their website) still hasn’t shown up. The first three bands that played were good, and the crowd of a little less than a hundred people is pleasantly surprised how well these couple of college kids managed to get their shit together enough to put on a pretty good show. But, without that show-ender, all that you’ve worked for is going to end in a flat and awkward failure. There are about five minutes left of the last group before the folk marimba band’s supposed to play and you get a call from their manager saying that the band’s stuck in Pittsburg traffic and won’t be able to make it. You panic. It says on the program that the show goes until ten, and there’s no way you’re going to go up there and embarrass yourself in front of all those people. You confer with your colleagues to think of any last-minute plans, and Bill, ever the optimist, suggests something.

“That guy, Kurt. Hasn’t he written like a bunch of songs?”

“Yeah, I guess, but does he have enough to play a forty minute set?”

“Probably. I see him playing a guitar on the quad all the time and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him play the same song twice. I mean, do we have any other options?”

“I guess not… Is Kurt around?”

“Yeah. He goes to all these open mic-type things.”

Kurt arrives as if in a blissful daze. His wavy brown hair rests on his shoulders and his eyes are always half-closed, even when speaking to you. He seems nice enough and assures you that he has enough material to finish the set; he just needs an electric, an acoustic and maybe a drummer if you can spare one. You have all three, so you oblige and thrust him onstage a couple minutes after the last band has played. The audience is quiet as Kurt methodically sits at the stool center stage, grabs the acoustic laid out for him and starts fingerpicking the first notes of “Baby’s Arms.”

Smoke For My Halo is so personable, it sounds as if it were performed by a friend you never knew was a musical genius. His sluggish drawl conjures the image of an intense slacker, but he focuses that mentality into gorgeous songs that are relatable and often hilarious. There’s a song about Jesus, one about being on tour, one about selling out, and a shit ton about girls, apathy and some combination of the two. Smoke For My Halo is richly produced with extra percussion and clever guitar effects that contradict the laziness Vile emits so well in his performance. It’s an endearing effort that might convince you to turn up the bass a little and rest that extra hour before starting that really important paper you’ve been meaning to get to. I know a guy that reminds me of the Kurt Vile on Smoke Ring For My Halo, and you do, too. And you’re not alone if you count Vile’s success here as a win for that guy, as well.

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo: A-

The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar: A-

"Whirring"

Alas, in the time that I’ve had to listen to The Joy Formidable’s first proper album, The Big Roar, I haven’t found much to write about. I’ve been far too busy enjoying the album and taking in the great amounts of fun, joy, distress and catharsis this trio can conjure for a fifty-minute product that has the potential to mean the world to countless amounts of listeners.

In many ways, The Big Roar can be compared to Los Campesinos! Romance Is Boring, another album by a British group that seethes with erudite bravado; its UK release was almost an exact year before that of The Big Roar. However, The Joy Formidable are a lot more raw than Los Campesinos! in a lot of ways. Rather than clever wordplay, The Joy Formidable hinge their appeal on the performance of guitarist and lead singer, Ritzy Bryan. Whether strumming elastic chords or jading riffs with distortion, Ritzy’s guitar parts sound just on the verge of implosion, and The Joy Formidable’s bassist and drummer accommodate this attitude, excellently. Ritzy’s lyrics don’t riff on angst-y subjects in a stream-of-consciousness whimper like that of Los Campesinos! Instead they opt for poignant adages that are often just as affecting. “Love is the everchanging spectrum of a lie!” Ritzy hollers in a jarring falsetto on The Big Roar’s epic opener. “I don’t want to see you like this,” she pleads on a later track. These vague statements can seem to many like pompous posturing, but the massive heft of the band’s musicianship, coupled with Ritzy’s confident swoon, make these overarching declarations far from platitudes.

The Big Roar is the first indie rock album I’ve ever heard that prominently features double bass drum. Not surprisingly, many of The Big Roar’s tracks crumble under the weight of their own entropy, collapsing into bouts of chaotic fuzz and crash cymbal. To heighten this state of pandemonium, drummer Matt Thomas will begin wailing on his set to elevate the heaviness of the band’s tracks more than I’ve ever heard a group like them do. On the album’s centerpiece, the raucous “Whirring,” Thomas even weaves double bass triplets into the din that overtakes its second half. It’s unexpected at first, but becomes exceedingly appropriate as it is the highest musical addition the band could have incorporated at that point. When the song sputters close to the seven-minute mark, one wonders why other bands haven’t tried it before.

The Big Roar, by its end, feels like the culmination of multiple albums, because it’s packed with so many peaks that are overtaken by silence, there are a handful of cases when one thinks that there is no way that the group could continue after such a prompt aural beating (This effect even occurs midway through a song, as on the two-part “Llaw = Wall”). And yet The Joy Formidable carry on, hurling life-affirming climaxes at you like you were the last picked for a dodgeball game. The Big Roar is such a ridiculously promising debut for this London group, I’m surprised other critics haven’t received it as rapturously. It’s the perfect mission statement, because it establishes The Joy Formidable’s sound, but still leaves some aspects of it to be explored and improved upon, and I have the utmost confidence that they will continue to make great music as they get a more confident footing as a band. Welcome aboard, The Joy Formidable. Glad to have you with us.

The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar: A-

R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now: C+

"Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter"

It’s one thing for a band to cop the performance style of R.E.M. and make something half-assed as a result. It’s something else, entirely, when the band whose style people are copping to make crappy albums are copping the copping of those bands to make something supremely shitty. R.E.M. are supposed to be this influential band that was a bastion of pre-indie rock (and they are), but on their newest album, Collapse Into Now, they sound downright amateurish, stripping the elements that made them unique of all pretense. Not a ballast can be found on Collapse Into Now to keep it from preening into a big dumb STATEMENT of an album.

So where to start? Music: Collapse Into Now suffers from the same ailment that struck The Hold Steady’s most recent album, Heaven Is Whenever, in that the lack of variety in the guitars makes it sound far too dense and monolithic. The guitar and bass work of Peter Buck and Mike Millis, respectively, is decent, but the production on their instruments is nauseating in its lack of dynamics.

Lyrics: Oh boy, here we go. Never have I ever heard such a decent album bogged down by such awful lyrics. Michael Stipe has written some fantastic songs in the past, but, on Collapse Into Now, he seems to take himself so seriously, he not only believes he can get away with reciting inane poetry like, “I cannot tell a lie / It’s not all cherry pie” and “This is not a parable / This is a terrible,” but believes that it is high-end art to be analyzed and admired. Over a pseudo-shanty built upon accordion and acoustic guitar, Stipe breathes solemnly, “The kids have a new take / A new take on faith,” with the utmost intention of having you hang on his every word, but that heavy-handedness is laughable to even consider taking seriously. “Mine Smell Like Honey” pairs inane lyrics with an even more inane song title, “Walk It Back” tries and fails miserably to form a chorus around a clumsy phrase and “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I” is just as bad as its title would suggest.

Collapse Into Now even has somewhat of an arc of shitty lyrics, climaxing on final track, “Blue,” by far the worst song on the album. In it, Stipe lets loose in a five-minute, distorted, stream-of-consciousness soliloquy, slinging the type of non sequitur vomit that could only come from someone who doesn’t think anyone would be smart enough to read into a single line or phrase. “Yellow circus left the stakes a broken ropes world’s useless mug / The ties that bind, ha ha / I can be a bad poet / Street poet / Shit poet / Kind poet too,” and he goes on like this for a few more stanzas before Peter Buck coos a soft refuge, but not for long, as we’re thrust back into the fray of Stipe’s pretentious psyche. That’s right, pretentious. “Blue” is so awful, it could make you lose faith in what R.E.M. has become over the past decade. It confronts you, directly, with the possibility that the band may believe significantly more than just their own hype.

It is in this regard that Collapse Into Now sounds like the work of an R.E.M. cover band, because it masterfully takes the notable aspects of the group and exaggerates them into agonizing caricatures. When Stipe sings in a lower register, he has a habit of trailing off his notes, making them sound, intentionally or not, much more poignant than any logic garnered from his lyrics could justify. He sounds like what my Michael Stipe impression would sound like if I wanted him to sound conceited and provincial. It’s surprising to hear such labored drivel from a group as respected as R.E.M. I’ve heard some heinous ‘90’s rehashing in my time, but it is a genuine disappointment to hear such a stalwart so spectacularly spin out as badly as the band does on Collapse Into Now.

R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now: C+

Sidi Tourè - Sahel Folk: B+

"Bon Koum"

If for nothing else, Sidi Tourè’s newest album should be listened to for the man’s furious fretwork. Whether he leads off with some atonal rhythm or is playing with pull-offs while he sings, the man excellently abuses his acoustic guitar on Sahel Folk and still manages to sound melodic and tempered throughout. The only percussion on the album is in “Taray Kongo,” which is provided by Tourè, himself, as he beats his guitar on the downswing of manic strums. As if his guitar wasn’t emotive enough, the Mali native does an admirable singing job that peaks at Sahel Folk’s end, as he sounds deferential when singing his country’s name in “Artiatanat.” Listening to Sahel Folk, it is easy to see why many call this kind of music the origin of the blues of the American south. Although I understand not a word of Sahel Folk, Tourè’s passion is apparent in the album in spades, and it is just as enjoyable and relatable as anything else I’ll hear all year.

Sidi Tourè - Sahel Folk: B+

Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place: A

"Prizewinning"

A part of me wants to hate The Magic Place, because it’s clear that it’s an album that did not take much thought to make. All its songs are ambient textures of female voices, drenched in reverb, repeating, interrupting and falling over each other. It’s an album that I would consider quite lazy, because anyone with a decent singing voice could have made it and perhaps with just as much success. However, Barwick’s arrangements on The Magic Place are vast, spacious and beautiful, no matter how generic they might ostensibly sound.

The Magic Place does not change from song to song. The countless forms of Barwick’s voice, winsome and whispery, drift formlessly through the album with very little variation aside from an occasional change in octave or key. The songs rarely heighten or have any sense of dynamics, and, when they do, they don’t build so much as add. Many songs begin with a piano, but, in the times when it, or any other instrument, is introduced, it is not from an accommodating context or crescendo. The loud chorus in “White Flag,” the standup bass in “Vow” and the hand percussion in “Prizewinning” simply appear in their respective songs. I would say that they serve no purpose, but, and this is one of the many great aspects of The Magic Place, they all work towards an end in that they all make the arrangements sound even more luxurious than they already were. The presence of these parts may have been an afterthought while Barwick was making The Magic Place, but, when they’re there, it is clear that what they are and what they do were slyly calculated for optimal effect.

Barwick’s debut is unique in the genre of ambient, because, where artists like Emeralds and Ohneotrix Point Never use computerized instruments, The Magic Place is almost entirely comprised of organic human voices, and, as a result, it’s the most intimate ambient album I’ve ever heard. The Magic Place’s lyrics are unintelligible and no single voice stays for long, but the album, as a whole, is nothing if not welcoming. As the wisely titled first track would indicate, The Magic Place envelops you from the very first note. It’s homogonous, but in a way that makes it sound like a forty five minute trip through your own subconscious.

In a way, The Magic Place is indulgent, because it makes a job out of pressing that one heart-melting pleasure center we all have to mawkish proportions. Still, it is fantastic at doing what I’ve deduced is the purpose of ambient music, which is to be the lubricant for your mind’s eye, giving you a soundtrack for expanding your thoughts and exploring your memories. The Magic Place is emotionally ambiguous, which means you can listen to it happy, sad, angry, horny, drunk, high or with a hangover and take away a completely different experience (Although I don’t know why you would listen to ambient music drunk or horny… sicko). It can be meaningful or pointless, but The Magic Place is special in that your reaction to it, to a certain extent, is a reflection of yourself.

Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place: A

Wye Oak - Civilian: B+

"Civilian"

Some bands find their niche by making modern interpretations of the sounds of artists that influenced them (Oasis, LCD Soundsystem, Kylesa). Others just flat out write songs that sound like their influences, with little to no subtext to defend them from accusations of unoriginality. Wye Oak is one of the latter. Although Civilian is a thoroughly consistent album, not once does it attempt to forge a path for the group to differentiate themselves from other hard-nosed shoegaze bands with female singers. The melodic dissonance that often envelops Civilian is very similar to that of Land of Talk, Jenn Wasner’s casual voice the spitting image of Land of Talk’s Elizabeth Powel. When Wye Oak go into reverb-heavy space jams, they sound exactly like the emotionless boogie of School of Seven Bells, with similar vocal tendencies to boot. Even when the group tries to close Civilian with a spare, guitar-led lament, they sound like a cover band for their Baltimore colleagues, Beach House, Wasner’s voice hardly as affecting as Victoria Legrand’s smoky croon. And, yes, I know all four of these bands formed around the same time, but the three besides Wye Oak do what Wye Oak do better than Wye Oak, so who’s really counting years at this point, anyway? Civilian is not a bad album, but, considering that there are so many identical bands out there that do its job better, it’s not something that you’ll particularly miss if you don’t hear it.

Wye Oak - Civilian: B+

Live Album Roundup: March 15th 2011

Pearl Jam - Live on Ten Legs

"Unthought Known (Live)"

Released: January 18th, 2011

After every live show, Pearl Jam give audience members a code to download a bootleg of the concert they saw online as a souvenir. They are produced respectably and are excellent time capsules for those few hours. Live on Ten Legs, the live album that has been released in conjunction with the twentieth anniversary of the release of the band’s debut album, Ten, sounds like one of these bootlegs. Which is fine, because the album is a decent recording of the group at their high consistency, playing a set that they could have played anywhere, split evenly between deep cuts and reworkings of old hits and closing with the one-two punch of “Alive” and “Yellow Ledbetter.” However, Live on Ten Legs does not sound like the live commemoration of my favorite album of the 90’s. The instrumentation, the audience and Vedder’s voice, which, after twenty years of torture, can still scream the “RHINESTONES” line in “Unthought Known” with particular vigor, are great. But I don’t see the point of Live on Ten Legs if it’s mixed with the purpose of being just another live album to be listened to by people who probably already own something very similar to it (not to mention the fact that only two song in the set are from the album it’s honoring). The only significant value in Live on Ten Legs is that the band plays a few songs from Backspacer amiably, but, with a career as consistent and lively as Pearl Jam’s, the group can afford to be less modest. B

Matisyahu - Live at Stubbs Vol. II

"Youth (Live)"

Released: February 1st, 2011

Matisyahu is probably the only modern artist that got started through a live album. Released in 2006, Live at Stubbs took the assured music of the Hasidic rapper’s debut and put it in a setting where it sounded distinct and better, and reached widespread attention from many, myself included, as a result. Four years later, and with two more albums under his belt (the abysmal Youth and the underrated Light), Matisyahu returns to Texas to bookend this chapter of his career, and it sounds pretty good. The set is evenly distributed between his three albums and the guy and his dub trio perform it energetically. He references the first Live at Stubbs by taking some of its most notable rhymes like that of “King Without a Crown” and “Aish Tamid” and injects them into newer songs, to good effect. My only complaint is that, although the Youth songs sound better in this context, they are still ham-fisted and overwrought. Their presence drags Live at Stubbs Vol. 2 down from excellent to still very good. Fans will like it for the performances of new songs like “Youth” and “One Day”, but I would still suggest the first Live at Stubbs for an excellent introduction to the man’s work. B+

Jònsi - Live at the Wiltern

"Go Do (Live)"

Released: February 1st, 2011

Your enjoyment of Live at the Wiltern is under the assumption that you have not heard Jònsi's other live album, Go Live, which was released less than three months before Live at the Wiltern. If you have, Live at the Wiltern is useless, because both live albums feature the exact same setlist and feature extremely similar performances. The only reason I’m talking about this and not Go Live is because I dropped the ball on listening to Go Live and Jònsi was kind enough to give me another chance to rate a Jònsi live album. Those looking for new interpretations of Jonsi’s material from his debut, Go, will be disappointed, as Jònsi partakes in almost no stage banter or experimentation throughout his hour and a half long set. Those looking for a rousing field test of Go will also be disappointed, as Jònsi makes its songs even more pensive, “Animal Arithmetic,” the second half of “Around Us” and the bass drum at the end of “Icicle Sleeves” being the only exceptions. More than anything else, Live at the Wiltern stands as proof to naysayers that Jònsi's performance on Go was not all auto-tune and studio finickry. I don’t know if it convinces me to see the guy live anytime soon, but Live at the Wiltern is a pretty good representation of an excellent album, which should more than satiate the live album’s intended audience. B

Bob Marley - Live Forever: The Stanley Theater, Pittsburgh, PA, September 23rd, 1980

"Natural Mystic (Live)"

Released: February 1st, 2011

For many music fans from my generation (I don’t know what it’s called, but I’m 19, so figure it out), Bob Marley has become more of a symbol than an artist; we have heard and been taught to love his hits and humanitarian work, but, as a result, we have been conditioned to view him as an intangible myth rather than a musician. Live Forever, a recording of Bob Marley’s last concert before his death from cancer in May of 1981, does an excellent job of humanizing the reggae superstar and consolidating his legacy for a new generation of music listeners. The first hit on Live Forever comes ten tracks into the album, and all the deep cuts Marley leads off with are fantastic and exhibit him as energetic, charming, funny and committed to his craft. Live Forever’s first half of lesser-known songs is invigorating and eye-opening and its second half of hits is fluid and poised. The Wailers rip up “The Heathen” with a guitar solo and turn “Could You Be Loved” into an intense percussion jam and Marley sounds like he’s having the time of his life throughout. Live Forever may best 1984’s Legend as the best introduction to Marley’s music, because it portrays him as an artist with incredible range. As his final product, it shows that the man left us at the peak of his talents. A

Live Album Roundup: March 15th 2011

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes: B+

"I Follow Rivers"

Much has been written about the sonic change Lykke Li has made since her 2008 debut, Youth Novels. Where her first album was a set of quiet, unobtrusive love songs, Wounded Rhymes, her newest, is mostly raucous and rousing. Its backdrops are filled with romping shakers and toms, creating a sound that is primal, slinky and sexy, adjectives that few would have used to describe her work on Youth Novels. The interim between albums has yielded some significant image changes for Lykke as well. Her performances in support of Wounded Rhymes feature her in a black leather poncho with matching shorts and boots, her dark hair pulled back behind her head to look like a masculine crew cut. It would appear that Lykke’s transformation from shy songstress to boisterous vixen has been drastic, but organic. However, although Lykke may have made all the right moves in tweaking her appearance and her songs, something just doesn’t seem right to complete either picture. For however Lykke may try to extricate herself from the image of her first album, her vocal presence on Wounded Rhymes is still suited for the soft and calm, and, more often than not, her attempts to betray that are off-putting and awkward.

It’s unfortunate to say, because, basically, I am accusing Lykke Li of evolving as an artist. But, time and time again, when she moves out of her comfort zone, Wounded Rhymes comes off as just that: uncomfortable. The danceable toms and circus organ riff in first track, “Youth Knows No Pain,” provide excellent scenery for the image Li attempts to convey on the album. And it works right up until she takes the mic for the verses and chorus. When that occurs, though, her innocuous croon drags the song down more than if it were performed by a singer with a more dynamic voice. “I Follow Rivers” is a great song, Lykke notwithstanding, but it suffers from the same problems. Lykke’s accompaniment is convincing, but her voice doesn’t sell it past that vital last stretch. Much ink has been used up on the “I’m your prostitute / You gon’ get some” line in “Get Some,” but, when Lykke sings it, it sounds just about as evil as if the ETrade baby sang it.

The good news is that Wounded Rhymes is split evenly between the new and old Lykke. Where her sexuality may be forced in songs like “Rich Kids Blues,” her turns in quieter contexts are minimalist and sincere. In a song like “I Know Places,” she sounds more confident with just an acoustic guitar supporting her than all the maladroit posturing on Wounded Rhymes combined. When she evokes sadness as a lover in “Sadness in a Blessing,” it comes off as mature and heartbreaking, especially at the ending of the chorus, when Lykke concludes, “Sadness, I’m your girl.” These songs all deal with crushing amounts of disappointment and loneliness (“All my love is unrequited” goes one song’s chorus) and their brilliance in silence make the bloated songs of Wounded Rhymes sound more like overcompensation than fun.

In her song for the Twilight soundtrack, “Possibility,” Lykke Li embodied vulnerability with little more than a piano and some brooms, and, two years later, Wounded Rhymes proves that she can still pull off moments of such beauty. All the album’s quiet songs are excellent and the ones that strike a middle ground between that and the brashness of “Get Some” are good as well. Wounded Rhymes isn’t so much a misstep as a great album with a few songs that jump the gun. Lykke Li is one of those artists whose moderation suits them best, and, although I can respect the polarizing tracks of Wounded Rhymes, none of them appear without some unfortunate consequence.

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes: B+