Album Review: Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes

Somewhat wrongly categorised previously as the latest in a line of lovely-if-a-little-predictable Swedish pop artists; it’s nevertheless a relief to report that Li’s appropriately titled follow-up ’Wounded Rhymes’ has seen the sweet, coy girl of before go all grown up and mature on us. Where once she was telling us in a babyish coo that she was a ‘dancer all along’; the Swedish songstress is now deflowered enough to growl out that she‘s our ‘prostitute’ and ‘we gonna get some’. And she used to seem like such a nice girl.

It’s a change for the better though, as the madhouse off-kilter organs of ‘Youth Knows No Pain’ set the tone for a more mature and well-rounded album than her previous release. It’s not that she wasn’t capable of flashes of nastiness before; but now even lyrics like’I Follow Rivers’ ‘…I’ll follow you deep sea baby, I’ll follow you…‘ take on a menacing twist; in a stalkerish, Sting-ing, ‘Every Breath You Take’ kinda way.

That’s not to say the album doesn’t have its prettier moments. The strong sense of melody from ‘Youth Novels’ remains, whilst the Spector of Phil’s production that looms over proceedings is never actually exhumed. ‘Sadness Is A Blessing‘ is sweet; whilst the stop-you-in-your-tracks melancholy of ‘I Know Places’ is mesmerising. Yet it’s the Shirelles-y shoowoping of ‘Unrequited Love’ that’s the standout moment here: the sparse instrumentation showcasing as it does just how marvellously unique her voice is; and proving too that for all Li’s new found vixen, she can still just as seamlessly transgress back into that cuddly little cub of old- and get away with it.

In fact, every track impresses here, right the way down to the near-perfect closer ‘Silent My Song’. It’s a fitting end to a record that’s a near-faultless fusion of dreamy codas, windswept melancholic melodies and brash-sexual in-your-endo. It’s probably too early to be talking about contenders for album of the year but….8/10

Film Review: 'Howl'

As a film, this is a rare bird: a biopic that is actually more about Ginsberg’s ‘filthy’ poem 'Howl' than the artist’s life; and whilst that shouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, it does feel a bit like an opportunity missed as a result.

Ginsberg’s life story would hardly have required much Hollywoodizing- being as it is that of a young poet who falls in love with Kerouac, spends time in a psychiatric hospital, hangs out with junkies and writes songs with Bob Dylan; yet it takes a backseat here to poetry set to animation and the courtroom ‘drama’ of the obscenity trial- a ‘drama’ that in truth is actually about as dramatic as a mouse’s fart.

In fact, the lack of screen time devoted to Ginsberg’s life is doubly disappointing given that the multi-talented James Franco is so superb as Ginsberg. The poet wasn’t much of a looker; so the casting in his place of Time magazine‘s ‘Coolest Man Of The Year‘ James Franco (perhaps most familiar as Spiderman franchise tritagonist Harry Osborn) correctly raised a few eyebrows; but he is in his element here as the sexually repressed, awkward Ginsberg- even getting Ginsberg’s Top Cat-ish voice down to a tee. It’s just a pity all his good work is limited primarily to a static interview situation that does little justice either to the biography of the poet or the sprawling, hallucinatory nature of his poetry.

If truth be told, ‘Howl’ shoots for four very different hoops- a Ginsberg biopic, a poetry recital, an archive-style interview and a courtroom drama- but largely misses all four; primarily because, for all Franco‘s brilliance, we‘re only a few clicks away from watching the real thing on YouTube anyway. Any one looking for a beat revival at the cinema would, it seems, be far better placed waiting for the upcoming ’On The Road’. 4/10