On her most compact but most expansive album, Li channels the confidence and audacity of 20th-century English rock stars. Over the course of her nearly two-decade-long career, Lykke Li’s albums have gotten shorter, sparser, sadder, and sexier. The progressive pop singer says that The Afterparty will be her last in this current artistic incarnation, and she decided to go out with a bang. While it may be her most compact album yet—nine tracks, a little under 30 minutes—it’s more expansive in its vision. On The Afterparty, Li channels the confidence and audacity of English rock stars from the 20th century. Sure, that means swagger and string sections, but also reflecting on her relationship with God and asking big-swing existential questions. On her recent Apple Music Radio Takeover, she revealed that The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was the song she was obsessed with and that she aspired to. “Knife in the Heart” goes there with its exhilarating combination of lyrical darkness and musical uplift. The searching electronic ballad “Sick of Love” began as a simple pop song, but when it wasn’t coming together, Li says she asked herself, “‘What if I just pretend that I’m Brian Eno and I go into a room with modular synths and EBow and just kind of go ham?’ And that’s what happened.” Which isn’t to say that on The Afterparty she totally abandoned her Swedish pop roots. As she explains, “I tried for this album to be a bit ABBA, if ABBA took a lot of LSD.”