Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
In some ways, the most unexpected album on this list. Lykke Li's first album Youth Novels had its moments, but for the most part I found it too limited, with too many incomplete sketches relying on cuteness and not much else. For Wounded Rhymes she came back transformed - still recognisable and still with the same producer and mostly the same instruments, but powered-up, focused and angry. "Get Some" was the early statement of purpose, all shyness or hesitancy blown away in a storm of sex and thumping drums which remains fantastically fun.
Mixing indie sensibilities with a new widescreen pop classicism, her sound and songs now hit a spot in a way that no one else has quite managed. The "Be My Baby" beat's inevitable appearance comes on "Sadness is a Blessing", the zenith of the album in its masterful control of melancholy. Confident and accomplished, even her voice took on a new deeper force which was barely hinted at previously, one which is as well suited to the scathing blitz of "Rich Kid Blues" as to the bare heartbreak of "Unrequited Love".
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