“I am longing for your poison,” Lykke Li begs on “Gunshot,” from her latest album, I Never Learn. “Lay me down in your ocean, carry me and my burden.” The track goes off like a shotgun blast of echo and reverb, her lovelorn singing rising against a tide of faraway drums and churchy organ. Li's lonely vocals lie at the heart of it all, wallowing in a deepening sadness despite the grandiose production. The Swedish singer insists that she has a “Heart of Steel,” but she catalogs a nonstop litany of disappointment and heartbreak (emphasized further by the album title's punch line), until she inevitably finds herself “Sleeping Alone.” Li's vocals and desperate passion are so stirring that she makes such misery seem involving and cathartic instead of merely bleak.

Tue., Sept. 23, 7 p.m., 2014
(Expired: 09/23/14)

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