Peter Bjorn and John / Lykke Li: "Breaker, Breaker" / "Get Some"

The last few Peter Bjorn and John albums have gotten progressively smaller and pettier after Writer’s Block (2006), as if the grooves and delicately expressed emotions of songs like “Young Folks” or “The Chills” were a ruse or a failing, as opposed to the whole point of the band’s existence in the first place. Their latest single, “Breaker, Breaker,” drains away all trace of echoing space or resonant tones, and throws out something like “Before you break my heart / Before you start / I’m going to break your arm and concentration” before even thirty seconds have passed. The “A-Punk” aping video may give some hint as to the direction they hope to go, but Vampire Weekend’s privileged menace is sympathetically written and attractively produced. One gets the impression PB&J have confused defiant energy with unappealing sloppiness.

On Lykke Li’s “Get Some” (whose video hilariously appropriates the Lady Gaga aesthetic, unlike the one for “Breaker, Breaker,” which merely invites a Vampire Weekend lawsuit), Bjorn, who produces, does just what Writer’s Block implied he might do, which is something along the lines of insisting on spaghetti western guitar and a brief breakdown with chanting and cowbell.

While Lykke Li’s lyrics are more confrontational here than on Youth Novels (2008), they still seem deeper and more consistently thought out than anything she’s penned before. Earlier lyrics like “I think I’m a little bit in love with you / But only if you’re a little bit in love with me” won over the listener because they communicated love with logical theorems, still somehow maintaining all the emotional variables that surround such constants. Here, the punchline of “Like a shotgun needs an outcome / I’m your prostitute, you gon’ get some” reads as the natural next step in that relationship, as opposed to a tangential lark. Love has gotten more complex in a Lykke Li song, but instead of getting angry her narrator’s getting purposeful. “Don’t make demands / I don’t take none” is a perfect set-up for the “get some” pay-off: there’s a burgeoning connection between Li and the hypothetical subject, but if the hypothetical subject questions the inevitability of the expected result, the hypothetical subject compromises it.

What’s worse is Bjorn is giving away his best production and saving his least interesting ideas for the band that pays his bills. It’s the same kind of illogical thinking that blustery songs like “Breaker, Breaker” display, the same kind of misreading of Bjorn’s popularity. So even if “Get Some” is a song meant to convey negotiation in a very different kind of relationship, when it comes down to Li and Bjorn and what they’ve made together, it’s clear who’s come out on top.