Little Dragon

Little Dragon sounds like youthful promise feels. The beating heart of the late-night dance floor, with all of its stirring and shadowy opportunities, thrives on the kind of propelling, accreting beats provided on this Swedish band’s newest creation, Ritual Union. With pulsing hooky-ness, and the lightly divined vocals of singer Yukimi Nagano, the album imparts some quality of sweet addictiveness. This sweetness is almost deceptive, and what unfolds as one listens is the soundtrack for all the mistakes one is seduced to make when shielded by wonderfully careless youth. One gives into its sounds like one too many drinks, or an ill-suiting paramour. The title track speaks of the inevitability of getting oneself into trouble, and it sounds so good that it makes such kinds of mistaken love-trouble seem worth the hassle, before we all know better. With moods of both sexiness and distress, Ritual Union makes a grand party record, an appropriate accompaniment for events stylized to situate individuals on the edge of discovery, anxious for anything to happen, hungry for connection. To listen to it is to be driven to desire.