Lykke Li At First Avenue

Strobe lights. Fog. Black Drapes. Percussion. Lots of percussion. Massively percussive. Lykke Li rocked it last night at First Avenue.

I’ve loved Lykke Li since I first saw her video for “Little Bit” via MySpace or something way back in 2008. She’s an interesting little creature…sort of looks like a cross between Fiona Apple and an Olson twin. She wiggles and jerks and throws her head around. But I had no idea she was so rock n’ roll.

Her stage set consisted of black drapes hanging from the ceiling all around the stage, a fog machine, bright white lights, and drums everywhere. This was automatically very cool since good percussion makes me happy. And there was a lot of good percussion last night.

Her band was stellar…and live. It’s rare for an artist that makes this sort of dance/club music to have actual live musicians on stage, but that’s one of the many things I love about Lykke Li. Upon first listen, you think, oh this is fun. It’s got a good beat. I can dance to it. But she goes way beyond that. The thing that first grabbed me about her first album was that it was quite obvious that the majority of the instrumentation was created live…not by ProTools. That’s a big plus. Then you go beyond that and really listen to her lyrics and they are beautiful. There’s so much more there than a good beat.

But this is about her live show.

Her set kicked off with the instrumental ending to her song “I Know Places”. The fog encased the stage and then First Avenue while strobe lights flickered to the beat the black drapes twirled and danced around. It was very dramatic. “Jerome” was the first song she sung. It took me a while to warm up to this song, but recently I’ve been enjoying it more. And last night just made it better.

The rest of the set she moved around the stage, occasionally beating the living the shit out of a floor tom and cymbal. Every song of hers could be a radio hit. There was not one clunker in the set. She also did a stunning cover of "Unchained Melody".

There was a very excited fan of hers right up front and she totally flirted and waved to him throughout the night. I thought that was very cool of her.

Oh, yeah, we were also up front. I don’t know how that happened at a sold out First Avenue that we arrived late to. But there I was, right against the railing in front of the stage. That never happens.

Her opening act was an interesting Folkish duo called First Aid Kit. They each had super long hair that they would fling around maniacally and these dresses that looked more like curtains or something straight out of a cult. Their voices were beautiful though. I plan to do some digging around online today to learn more about them.

All in all it was crazy good show. I was sad that I was severely hungover from the night before and didn’t have the energy level she so deserved.

If you haven’t already, check out Lykke Li. You’ll fall in love. Her latest album is Wounded Rhymes and it came out this year. Every single song is excellent. You will not be disappointed.

Great slideshow of photos from last night can be found here.

And here is a super cool video I just found of Lykke with Bon Iver doing one of my favorite songs of hers "Dance Dance Dance"