Both Amanda Pittman and Jenn Bress had plenty to say about the Lykke Li and Grimes show at 9:30 Club this past Sunday, so they joined forces to bring you both reviews while Olivia Ung (wo)manned the digicam.
“Lykke Li pounced on 9:30 Club like a vixen cat sorceress,” remarked Jenn. She was a shadow in her signature head to toe black to a stage engulfed in illuminated fog, as if a thunderstorm threatened to break over the crowd. Instead Lykke Li broke into a bewitching rendition of “Jerome,” one of the more upbeat songs on this year’s Wounded Rhymes. She waved a drum around like a wand and we were all certainly spellbound as she shifted into crowd favorite, “I’m Good, I’m Gone.” Lykke Li is capable of taking the sad, melancholy of her music and making it sensual, a quality that seems beyond the grasp of her contemporaries.
“Have you ever been heartbroken? What about in Paris?” she asked the audience. We have, perhaps not in Paris, but at some point. “Paris Blue,” the B-side on her “Get Some” single, continued the feeling of lost love. The lighting was appropriately blue at this point as she wrapped herself in one of the drapes as if to hide from her overwhelming emotions. She then swept into “I Follow Rivers” and for a moment, one might have mistaken her for Stevie Nicks.
After following your lover down rivers, it’s time to be rational and let them read the signs you offer as you “Dance Dance Dance.” As two drummers “bang bang bang,” one spontaneously wraps his head in one of the curtains hanging from the ceiling, as though he was an unfurling mummy hanging from the rafters. At this point Li burst into a kazoo solo to lighten the mood. She begged the audience to clap along and used her wand to bang her tambourine, it’s likely the entire room was smiling at that point.
“Little Bit” forgets the past lover, and introduces us to a new one, one that we’re not ready for or willing to admit our full affections for, but we would “pull a trigger” and “jump off a cliff” before we would admit our feelings to ourselves. It’s easy to admit love for Lykke Li, as looking around, most lips in the crowd mouthed the words and hearts likely melted into puddles, or perhaps someone just spilled a drink.
“Love Out of Lust” was a reminder that while we often hesitate to love, we don’t deny our bodies. She continues into the trite, but tragic sentiments of “Rich Kid Blues” and brings us back to our indulgences and closes her set with what will surely send her to proper pop stardom, “Get Some,” but not before there is an almost Gloria Estefan-like dance groove to send her off with a bang. Turn the beat around, Lykke, get down.
Her absence from the stage is brief, and she follows her band back onto the stage for an encore.
The saga continues as our selfish nature won’t allow us to grow up, “Youth Knows No Pain.” It’s true. We freak out and fuck up because we don’t get close enough to feel the consequences, though if we do allow ourselves, we recognize that we’re still hurting from our past love, that never really went away, and we wait and hope that the “Possibility” remains—it doesn’t, but everyone wished together that it did. The evening closed with one last reminder of our lingering feelings; “Unrequited Love,” someone we just can’t manage to get over.
