{"id":681671,"date":"2026-05-20T10:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/681671\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:21:09","slug":"lykke-li-the-afterparty-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/681671\/","title":{"rendered":"Lykke Li: The Afterparty Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s getting harder to surrender yourself\u2014to the music, the moment\u2014without noticing a bitter aftertaste. On her sixth and purportedly final record, The Afterparty, Lykke Li<\/a> envisions a dawn when everyone\u2019s stumbling home bleary-eyed: riding out the comedown, knotted with anxiety, disjointed and hollow. Li\u2019s talked about her disenchantment with the music industry, from algorithm-based promotion to parasociality, and The Afterparty is positioned as a last gasp. It\u2019s a paean to feeling lost and despondent amid the sparkling lights, suddenly all too aware that you\u2019ve outgrown your lifestyle. Leaning into anonymity over intimacy, Li captures the anxieties of feeling outpaced and misplaced while the rest of the room keeps dancing on.<\/p>\n

The record\u2019s perspective is bleak, and from the outset, salvation seems fairly impossible. (The album\u2019s first line, a dreamy \u201ceyes to the sky,\u201d is followed by \u201cno angels here tonight.\u201d) Li\u2019s grasping for deliverance throughout The Afterparty, whether she\u2019s evoking Madonna<\/a> through \u201980s synths and lyrical homage\u2014\u201cDown on my knees\/Can you even hear my prayer?\u201d\u2014or chanting helplessly, \u201cLord, I don\u2019t know how, and I can\u2019t say when\/If we\u2019re lucky, we\u2019ll get lucky again.\u201d She\u2019s in purgatory: \u201cI\u2019m a phoenix, baby\/The flames no longer burn\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m no Jesus, I won\u2019t rise\u201d are utterly exhausted.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Vocally, The Afterparty doesn\u2019t sound nearly as downbeat as its lyrics paint it. That\u2019s thanks to Li\u2019s economy of words: Lines are often clipped, split, and vague, like flashes of light, so that if you dance your way through them, you\u2019ll miss the intent of the full phrase entirely. Can\u2019t think too hard if you never stop moving. Li\u2019s also succinct in another way: The record\u2019s only 25 minutes.<\/p>\n

The devastation hidden in these fragmented moments is further obscured by outwardly sunny electro-pop instrumentation. On opener \u201cNot Gon Cry,\u201d Li attempts to convince herself of happiness and brighten the night through sheer force of will, picking up energy in the chorus to insist that she\u2019s unaffected in a way that\u2019s almost cathartic. \u201cHappy Now\u201d\u2019s gated supersaw synth and spacey vocals are divine and dramatic on the surface, even as they chase a momentary high. \u201cLucky Again\u201d bounds through its hopeful-sounding chorus, and \u201cKnife in the Heart\u201d is cheery and choral, even as she laments, \u201cThis life, this life is a knife in the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

The promise of a better night\u2014of feeling invincible and free\u2014animates the record as it moves between \u201980s-inspired pop, dissonant piano, cinematic strings, and even acoustic guitar. But any touch of joy, as on the sweeping, sincere \u201cSo Happy I Could Die\u201d is conditional: \u201cHow long can it last?\/We\u2019re just slipping through the hourglass.\u201d The song\u2019s titular line is tinged with bitterness: Li places a heavier inflection on \u201cdie\u201d as the instrumental fades, leaving the word marooned. Even \u201cSick of Love\u201d\u2019s tongue-in-cheek wail of \u201cOh, what the hell\u201d feels self-aware when she sardonically adds: \u201cFell from heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s on those slower \u201ccomedown\u201d songs, the barest instrumentally and vocally, that more direct truths slip in. \u201cEuphoria,\u201d whose finger-picked intro and warm, slow vocals are reminiscent of Cyndi Lauper<\/a>\u2019s \u201cTrue Colors,\u201d is laced with the bittersweet promise of a temporary escape. \u201cFamous Last Words\u201d is a neat treatise on Li\u2019s disenchantment, with the music business and with the party itself: Over a tinny, discordant piano, she\u2019s despondent as she asks, \u201cDo you have a cigarette to spare?\/Take me somewhere\/I don\u2019t care.\u201d Creeping and vulnerable, this song is where Li offers some of The Afterparty\u2019s most explicit lyrics. She marks herself as the song\u2019s main character and admits she \u201chad to crash and burn to tell the tale\/It takes a hammer\/To know a nail.\u201d It\u2019s an unhappy retrospective that feels suspended by the buzzing piano chords\u2014and it\u2019s one of the most artistically compelling tracks, the place where she\u2019s most willing to let us in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s getting harder to surrender yourself\u2014to the music, the moment\u2014without noticing a bitter aftertaste. On her sixth and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-681671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}