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Transcript: Jason Bentley: Lykke Li live on KCRW, very nice! Lykke Li: Oh, thank you! JB: So this is crazy but one of our engineers, John Lewis had brought in a 7' from your dad's band from 1978. JB: Dag Vag is the name of it and I can't really.maybe the single is called 'Dimma.'
LL: Yeah I think so. I don't know! I don't know it so well, actually.
JB: It's crazy, isn't it? LL: It's strange! JB: Also there's a set list from 1978 and it's all hand written. Also, was he known as the 'Silver Surfer?' LL: The Silver Surfer! JB: Just a little interesting bit.
So it leads to a question about your upbringing and your family. I understand that both your mother and your father were in bands as you were growing up. LL: Yeah, my mom was in a band for a very short time. She realized it wasn't really for her.
But she did start one of the first female punk bands. And then my dad was actually the musician in the family. JB: So, was it always sort of predestined that you were going to be an artist and a musician?
LL: No, not at all really because my dad — he made lasagna, that's what I remember the most. So you know I really think I tried to follow my own pathbut I did end up as an artist somehow. JB: Well did they kind of nurture that in you at all or you just kind of struck out? LL: Well, they're really free. They don't tell you to do anything, so I think I just followed my own path. I don't really remember them telling me anything to do. I studied hard, you know.
I tried to rebel so I got good grades but they were like 'Yeahgreatwhatever.' It's like 'How about an F once and a while?' So I don't know. JB: And you moved around a lot as a child. I was born in Sweden, in the south.
And then we lived in Stockholm. Then we moved to Portugal when I was four and I was there for five years. Then I was back and fourth a bit. JB: Where do you call home now?
LL: I really don't think I can connect with that word because I never really had a home. I think home is where the hatred is.
JB: I noticed in the record some imagery connected to rivers and I wondered if that's something you identify with, the idea of a river? LL: Yeah, I very much do. I think that life is a river. It's never the same water that flows in the river. I kind of feel like a lot of things in life you could relate to rivers.
JB: With Wounded Rhymes, what did you want to accomplish differently from your last album? LL: I think I just wanted to make it more direct, more emotional, more rawa bigger punch, you know?
More honest, more of everything! But less atmosphere and baby fat. JB: Right, so just more direct. How did you try to accomplish that? Were you working with a producer or how did you get to that point? LL: No, I think just trying to live life as much as possible.
It was a lot of jumping off different bridges and edges. A lot of whiskey and late nights and taking chances. It was more about living to get that weathered feeling. JB: And did you write in Los Angeles? JB: I remember that I heard you were around. You heard I was around?
Lykke Li Get Some
Riding on the bus. JB: Do you like Los Angeles? LL: I do, I love it!
It's a dream come true for an emo girl like me.
Stream: B LL 3.01.11 In an with Pitchfork last year, Swedish indie chanteuse Lykke Li expressed a frustration common among young and talented female artists, particularly after the release of an acclaimed debut album. “Because you're a woman, the music industry puts you in another corner. I want to be fighting with the men. I want to be amongst the men, topless, throwing things onstage.” It’s the sentiment once echoed by Fiona Apple after Tidal (“This world is bullshit.”), by PJ Harvey after Dry (see the stark rage of Rid of Me); it’s the same anger that coursed through all of Sleater-Kinney’s albums, the same anger that led Robyn to form her own record label. If anger inspired Lykke Li’s startling sophomore album, Wounded Rhymes, the only clue is the palpable sense that she has something to prove, to herself and to those who glibly used a word like “cutesy” to describe Youth Novels. Lykke Li was just 21 when she released Youth Novels in 2008, and youth was evident in more than the album’s title. Youth Novels was as uneven as it was promising.
Like Apple, who followed the so-so Tidal with the remarkable When the Pawn, Li has consolidated and amplified the best aspects of her debut. The fully formed and full-bodied Wounded Rhymes is downright ferocious, a confident and swaggering statement from an artist coming into her own. In the Pitchfork interview, Li promised her new album would be “darker” and “moodier.” Its lyrics would be “heavier.” Boy, did she deliver. Lykke Li’s girl-group influences are most obvious on Wounded Rhymes’ two best tracks. With only a pitter-patter beat and a simple guitar arpeggio as her accompaniment, Li sings lines from the tear-stained pages of her teenage diary on “Unrequited Love.” The shoo-wop-shoo-wop background vocal is an unnecessary flourish, almost too obvious. The song’s raw longing is devastating enough to carry it.
Despite its lyrics (“sadness is my boyfriend, oh sadness I’m your girl”), the chorus to “Sadness is a Blessing” recalls the exuberance of The Ronettes’ “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up.” True to the girl-group genre, sorrow is delivered as triumphantly as joy. Wounded Rhymes peaks with “Sadness is a Blessing.” Its final three tracks never quite match the quality of the rest of the album. “I Know Places” comes close when the early-Dylan ballad gives way to a ghostly choral incantation. But “Jerome” and “Silent My Song” suffer in comparison to highlights like “I Follow Rivers” and “Rich Kids Blues.” They come off as filler, albeit high-quality filler, only here to bring Wounded Rhymes to the ten-track mark. For as much as Lykke Li looks to the 1960s for her inspiration, Wounded Rhymes sounds thoroughly modern.
Lykke Li Little Bit
Lykke Li Wikipedia
With Yttling’s aid, Li sends bubblegum pop melodies through the prism of garage rock, and the result is music as muscular as it is moving. Wounded Rhymes is a leap forward for Lykke Li, and perhaps, a stepping-stone to an unqualified masterpiece.
Her very own Extraordinary Machine.
