A warm Sunday night sees crowds spread all over St Kilda’s Fitzroy Street, but a most impressive line is being made in front of the entrance to the Prince of Wales’ bandroom, slightly stretching onto the road. The line is for Swedish indie popster Lykke Li, whose recent appearance at the Falls Festival in Lorne had fans singing along every word with her, and throwing bottles at people who weren’t her. With that kind of reputation, what would her sell out sideshow bring?
With the first few bars of Melodies & Desires playing in the background, Li along with her three piece band came out brandishing a drum stick, smashing a cymbal repeatedly to loud cheers before getting straight into her opening song Dance Dance Dance. She may say she is “shy shy shy” in the song, but it’s clearly not true. Lykke Li is a girl whose life is performance and she shows it. Her tiny body is dressed in what looks like a black sheet along with an assorted array of jewellery hanging around her neck and is constantly moving due to her various dance moves and poses. The crowd take in every bit of it, snapping pictures with mobile phones and yelling out for her attention, but not getting a response in return. This is her show, after all.
The audience is taught a few things about Lykke Li, and Lykke Li teaches the crowd a few things too. For one – she really likes the word “fuck”, especially when given a prefix (e.g. motherfucker), constantly referring to the crowd as motherfuckers. Before starting track Let It Fall, she turns to the crowd saying “Oh you seem ready tonight. Are you motherfuckers ready to dance?” Throughout the show she seems a little bit taken back by the crowd, mentioning that they are the best audience she’s ever played for. But when she expects the crowd to count along in French in the chorus for Window Blues, she has to teach them before they respond the way she wants. The crowd sing along with no problem for Little Bit, and a few laughs are had when she announces that Kings Of Leon are backstage and a few fans ask for her to bring them out.
Hands are clapping for single Breaking It Up and Li pulls out the megaphone to sing each chorus before departing stage. One beat later (in what must be the shortest encore break this reviewer has ever seen); Li and band are back, getting straight into Tonight. “I’m going to sing a special song because you are special” she announces, getting the crowd to do the doos while the band play the opening bars of Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. Li then asks the crowd if they can kick it, proceeding to spit Q-Tip’s verse from A Tribe Called Quest single Can I Kick It? with perfect timing. Talk about unexpected. The song finishes, a quick wave and suddenly people are heading towards the stairs, and it’s all over.
Walking out of the Prince’s bandroom, you were hard pressed to hear anyone complaining. While the set is lucky to be forty-five minutes in length, Lykke Li engaged the crowd whilst making it clear that she was the main attraction. Nothing against her talented backing band, especially her band’s drummer who smashes on the skins with vigour not usually seen in pop music. But the show existed to showcase the talent of one person, and that was Lykke Li.
