Lykke Li MP3

Lykke Li Youth Novels

noreply@blogger.com (Lykke Li MP3) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:17:00 +0000

Lykki Li's new album arrives tomorrow,

Here's what reviewer Ben Urdang has to say;

"Her voice is cute and delicate, and her songs are understated. Sometimes a song like minimalist grower Complaint Department leaves one thinking "Oh, so that's it then" and other times the lack of indulgence and her avoidance of overblown over-production is welcome. It's an album that definitely rewards the listener differently depending on their mood at the time. But ultimately the melodies are strong and it's an exercise in keeping their powers contained.

These well-written pop songs cover a broad spectrum, from the driving one-fingered piano groove of the superb I'm Good, I'm Gone through the emotional punch of Tonight to the upbeat power-pop of Breaking It Up - probably the closest she gets to a Robyn track.

The lo-fi percussion on Dance, Dance, Dance and recent single Little Bit, bring to mind the likes of Architecture in Helsinki, who can themselves charm and irritate in equal measure. Little Bit, in particular, is adorable while the likes of Dance, Dance, Dance and Let It Fall just get on the nerves.

The album closes strongly with a three-pronged attack of introspective power balladry of Everybody But Me, Time Flies and the gorgeous Window Blues, based around a two-note piano riff and using some pretty spooky-sounding backing vocals.

A high standard is maintained throughout the possibly over-generous 14 tracks, but it's not quite enough. Too many of the songs pass by without grabbing you and making you love them. It's ultimately a bit ineffectual.

It all leaves you wondering where Li's priorities are. She may be happy to remain on the sidelines, adored by the critics but ignored by the masses, but these songs are strong enough to cross over if she chooses to inject some extra oomph into them. Yet she doesn't seem much of a Freemasons remix kind of girl. As things stand, a lot of people are going to fall in love with this new young talent, and her ambitious and creative debut. But Lykke Li is likely to stay a cult curiosity for now."

Lykke Li Tour Dates, Summer 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Lykke Li MP3) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:59:00 +0000

June, 7 2008 08:00 PM - Stealth w/ El Perro del Mar, Nottingham

June, 8 2008 08:00 PM - King Tuts w/ El Perro del Mar, Glasgow

June, 10 2008 08:00 PM - Jericho Tavern w/ El Perro del Mar, Oxford

June, 11 2008 08:00 PM - ICA w/ El Perro del Mar - SOLD OUT, London

June, 12 2008 08:00 PM - Sugar Club, Dublin

June, 14 2008 08:00 PM - Hultsfred Festival, Hultsfred

July, 3 2008 08:00 PM - Quart Festival, Norway

July, 4 2008 08:00 PM - Arvika Festivalen, Arvika

July, 5 2008 08:00 PM - Roskilde Festival, Roskilde

July, 6 2008 08:00 PM - Eurockeennes Festival, Belfort

July, 23 2008 08:00 PM - Mosebacke w/ Anna Järvinen, Stockholm, Stockholms län

July, 31 2008 08:00 PM - Storsjöyran, Ostersund

August, 7 2008 08:00 PM - Öya Festival, Oslo

August, 8 2008 08:00 PM - Haldern Festival, Lower Rhine

August, 9 2008 08:00 PM - Way Out West, Göteborg

September, 5 2008 08:00 PM - Bestival, Isle Of Wight

Lykke Li - Sunday Times

noreply@blogger.com (Lykke Li MP3) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:43:00 +0000

If Amy Winehouse ever tires of the attention, Lykke Li Zachrison (“Luck-a-Lee” to anyone hazarding the pronunciation) suggests she could do a lot worse than embrace Stockholm. “If there’s one thing you can rely on people here to do,” says the 22-year-old singer, “it’s ignore you. Even your friends. People are too cool to do anything around here. It’s crazy.”

It might be crazy, but it also means that Lykke Li – the Zachrison doesn’t make it to the record sleeves – can make the walk from her flat to String, the bustling boho cantina in which we’re sitting, and be stopped not once. And yet it’s been five months since her debut album Youth Novels appeared in Sweden.

It says a lot for the country’s enlightened pop climate that a set of songs that emulate the crepuscular quirk-pop of early Björk by way of a Nordic Nina Simone have made a star of Lykke Li. Even her hair has achieved a measure of fame – in Swedish magazines “the Lykke Li bun” has apparently acquired a profile all of its own. Now, if music press hyperbole and the radio ubiquity of the current single I’m Good I’m Gone is anything to go by, Britain looks set to follow.
She might have a baby face but, in every other sense that matters, “I’m a hundred years old”. In spite of her intensely confident veneer, your instinct when she says it is to smile. At least, it would be were it not for the songs, which act as a vessel for most of the melancholy, lovelorn thoughts she seems to have. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that the love she sings about on Let it Fall and the recent single Little Bit is unrequited. “He’s an artist,” she says, with an edge of hurt, “and he’s stupid, so he couldn’t get past his own ego to love me back.”

When, in the words of Morrissey, she wants the one she can’t have, it drives her mad. It has been ever thus. Four years ago she left school with every intention of becoming a Nordic R&B pop sensation. Had it happened from the off, you wonder what instant stardom would have done for Lykke Li’s teenage ego – not least because of the almost comical indignation with which she met failure. After abortive collaborations with Swedish producers, she says she fell into a depression “because I was, like, what the f***? Is this it? I’m not a star yet?”

Desperate to pursue the breakthrough that had eluded her in Sweden, Lykke Li told her parents that she would be moving to New York. Far from expressing concerns for her welfare, her mother encouraged her to leave. It was, after all, what she herself had done 30 years previously, hitch-hiking through Afghanistan on her way to India.

By the time Lykke Li was born her parents – both veterans of the Swedish punk scene – had swapped the stability of Stockholm for an itinerant life. Between six and eleven, for example, Lykke Li lived in rural Portugal. Before Sweden beckoned again, an impetuous sortie to Morocco led to them lodging in the only hotel in town, which doubled up as a brothel. “I was maybe 12 or 13,” she recalls. “Old enough to work out what it was, and what the razorblades on the floor were for.”

Six years later, when Lykke Li landed alone in New York, her situation was no less precarious. The music she wanted to emulate was hip-hop, so it made sense to move into the Brooklyn suburb of Bushwick. A white girl in a black and Hispanic area, she didn’t need to draw attention to herself. She begged a gang of girls on a subway to desist from mugging her. Taking a taxi home was no safer. “One time, the taxi driver turned off his engine at my place and he was like, ‘Oh, can I get your number?’ And I’m like, ‘No, can you just drop me off?’ Then he got out and chased me to my apartment. I thought I was going to die.”

Taking to the stage before a typical crowd of Afro-Latino diaspora at the legendary New York club SOBs, she certainly felt like she wanted to die. Given a few more seconds to ponder the ramifications of singing her newest “Kate Bush-type song” before the assembled throng, Lykke Li might have thought twice. “The problem was,” she recalls, “that I went with a friend who told me I would be too scared to do it, so I wanted to prove him wrong.”

She was on stage for only 15 seconds, but can recall every one of them in detail. “I had this blue scout shirt on and I was 19 looking like 12. Straight away everyone started going, ‘Get the Britney Spears off the stage’. There was a riot. I had to leave the stage because I felt like I was about to puke.”

She had left Stockholm to become a pop star. The irony was that in her absence two of Sweden’s biggest exports in years were achieving international success by staying put. By forming her own label, the sometime UK chart-topper Robyn returned to the fray with the machine-tooled futuregum of her eponymous album.

No less remarkable for its ubiquity was Young Folks, the single by Peter Björn & John, whose Björn Yttling was impressed by a four-song demo by Lykke Li, so much so that he produced Youth Novels. His stamp is audible on many of the esoteric settings that the songs on Youth Novels inhabit – in particular the woozy, waxing harmonic tides of My Love and the strange, sensual soliloquising of Melodies & Desires.

Her pride at what she and Yttling have achieved is compounded by the nadir her life had reached last summer. Yttling’s interest was beginning to assume a mirage-like quality as Peter Björn & John chased their hit single around the world. While Lykke Li waited for him to return, the grim realities of getting by began to weigh upon her.

She got a job at a residential care home. “I was feeding people and changing nappies. People were dying all the time. Then I quit to work in another old people’s home. That was better, actually. You would have to help some people shower, and then there was one lady with a colostomy bag that I had to change regularly.”

Those five years in Portugal showed her that things could be different. “Over there you grow old and you move in with your children. Over here, that doesn’t happen. Everyone is lonely. People want to have a career. They’d rather work their asses off than have time for their families.”

Perhaps that’s the corollary of living in a country with high taxes that are used to ensure a strong infrastructure. Familial duties have been institutionalised. “Exactly,” she says, “It’s f***ed up. If you need help, you call the Government. In Portugal, people are poorer, but they help each other.”

All things considered, it comes as no surprise when Lykke Li declares that she won’t be in Sweden too much longer. She may return to New York. London is also a possibility. For the first time in her life she is spoilt for choice. If nothing else, that must be cause for happiness?

“Happiness?” She alights on a line from I’m Good, I’m Gone, the bit where she goes: “I’m breaking my back, but it’s all good.” As if her point weren’t already clear enough, she adds: “That’s the key to it all. You’ve got to bust your nuts.”

Lykke Li Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Lykke Li MP3) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Lykke Li Zachrisson

noreply@blogger.com (Lykke Li MP3) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:01:00 +0000

Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson (born March 18, 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden), better known by her stage name Lykke Li, is an indie singer.

She was raised by artistic parents (her mother was a photographer, her father is a musician) and lived in Portugal for five years, and spent winters in Nepal and India. At one point, she worked as a dancer on Swedish TV shows.

She released her first album, Youth Novels on LL Recordings in the Nordic region on 4 February 2008 and it will receive a wider European release this June. The album was produced by Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John and Lasse Mårtén. It will be released in the United States on 6 May 2008. The album will be released in the Republic of Ireland on 6 June 2008 and June 9th in the UK.

She had some success with the EP "Little Bit" in 2007. Stereogum named her an artist to watch in October 2007 and described her music as a mix of soul, electro and powdered-sugar pop.

Information from Wikipedia

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