Come Laugh Away Who You Are

Lykke Li “Youth Knows No Pain”

Lykke Li writes a lot about being young, it’s kinda her thing. To some extent it’s a “write what you know” situation, but in songs like “Youth Knows No Pain,” she’s singing from a more distant and knowing perspective. It’s a somewhat self-conscious exhortation to delight in the passion and energy of youth, and the tension in the piece comes from trying to figure out whether she’s being totally earnest about it, or if there’s a touch of irony to this Dionysian front. I tend to think it’s a little of both. Her voice is trebly and metallic in this track, which has a way of hardening her tone and concealing emotion. It works for the song — the rest of the production is very treble-heavy too, with busy cymbal crashes and a groovy 60s-style organ part taking up most of the space in the mix. All that treble sounds like an armor to mask vulnerability, and really, so does the call to sexy, reckless action. The title phrase ends up sounding like wishful thinking.

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