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Going into the venue tonight, I confess that my knowledge of Swedish singer Lykke Li was rather minimal, and my uneducated preconceived notion was that she’d be similar to Robyn, with a high energy dance storm taking place on stage. I was pretty off in that perception, and she’s grown in songwriting stature on her newest record, Wounded Rhymes. Her profile’s also raised considerably, given that with just two records under her belt, ticket sales were so brisk that the show was moved from the much smaller Paradise Rock Club weeks ago, and a generously full house greeted her.
Though she was thirty minutes late to arrive on stage, at least she had the presence to have the PA play both Brian Eno (“Needles in the Camel’s Eye”) and fellow countrymen Dungen (“Du E För Fin För Mig”) before the massive bass blasts came out of the sub-woofers that seemed to be also used as stage support. These monstrous sine waves rivaled the wall of sound that the Sunn O)))/Boris performance of Altar threw at me last year, and my legs were being blown like a nearby rotary fan on the high speed setting.
Li’s got a dramatic stage presence, and the billowing black columns of fabric, coupled with fog and blasts of strobes did a nice job of bringing focus on her and subtly shifting her pliable and adept band into the shadows, a ring around the focal point of the stage. She would alternately use a drums stick as a second source of percussion, and other times wield like a wand, casting spells out into the audience.
Now that I’m more familiar with the material, it’s pretty striking how she’s moved forward from the relative electronic fluff of the first record as compared the new material. “Youth Knows No Pain” in particular stuck out as a high point, it’s carnival ride keyboard and sultry rhythm showing the lesson she’s learned from the high priestess of stellar dance pop (Madonna, naturally): that one can wrap a tight, catchy melody around a beat and still fill the dance floor.
Opener Grimes (aka Claire Boucher) also took advantage of the muscular bass system capacity and dropped heavy loops of bass as the foundation for her breathy vocals that floated far above.
More photos of Lykke Li and Grimes can be seen at my site
