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Seated high up on the stairs of Hoxton Bar And Kitchen, Lykke Li speaks quietly over the chatter of the crowd below. She discusses her album, ‘Youth Novels’ a record of dreamy eclectic pop with Lykke’s vocals, full of girlishness, faltering and hiccupping over her bittersweet tales of love and teenage life. Asked to describe her music, Lykke Li’s response is telling: “Kind of intimate. Just honest, every song is about my life, it’s open.” This admission is backed-up by what she considers to be the main influences on the album: “Everything I’ve experienced in my life so far comes into the album in some way but mostly my youth years, hence the title. And I watched a lot of movies so I’m very filmic. And just passionate people that live their art.”
The music she was listening to whilst recording - mostly “ESG, The Shangri-La’s…” show their influence subtly on the album, booty-shaking rhythms, joyful hollers and paeans to dancing are combined with lyrics often injected with a sense of teenage melodrama to do The Shangri-las proud. The album however combines a far reaching mix of sounds and influences: “Since it’s my first album I didn’t have any pressure on me, so I just wanted to do whatever I wanted to do and I am eclectic as a person. I love all different stuff.”
The album was produced by fellow Swedish popster Bjorn Yttling – better known as one third of Peter, Bjorn and John. Lykke recalls the first time they worked together: “I just rang him up like one and a half years ago saying I need some help and please, please, please work with me and he said to come by the studio and then I sang a song and he was like ‘It’s pretty crap but I think it’s going to be good eventually so let’s do something’ so I worked with him from then on songs.”
The results of their collaboration find no finer vehicle than forthcoming single ‘Little Bit’. The track opens with a sparse steel drum intro, as the song goes on layers of music build up but there’s still a strong feeling of space. Lykke’s vocals are the main instrument and they bring a sense of warmness to the track despite her sometimes barbed lyrics. The album provides many more moments of blissful pop, another highlight being ‘Dance Dance Dance’ on which minimal guitars bustle against shuffling rhythms while Lykke sings like the anti-Shakira “my hips they lie/‘cause in reality I am shy, shy, shy”, it builds up to the jazzy ending, descending on a wave of lush harmonies.
The album was partly recorded in New York. A move influenced by the fact Bjorn was living there at the time of recording but also a desire to capture the atmosphere of life in the big city: “I just wanted it to sound like a place with lots of different people and vibes.” Although the recording of the album went well she declares playing live her true love: “You have to work in the studio but live is definitely more interesting.” She describes her ideal venue as “a small, sweaty bar and small stage. When it feels that anything can happen.”
Many reviews have compared her to Annie and Robyn, which Lykke Li feels more to do with the fact that she is Scandinavian and female as opposed to the music itself: “I’m not so electronic so maybe they just heard one track, I don’t know I don’t think we’re very similar in sound” she says with a shrug.
Indeed she suggests that she may have struggled with some of the attention she has received from writers, however positive it may have been. Although she herself doesn’t “pay much attention to what’s said and what’s cool”, she is wary of being hyped as an artist in the early stages. “I still don’t want to be hyped. It’s positive in one meaning but then it needs to stop or they’ll then start to write bad stuff and I just want to be an artist, I’d just rather that people come and talk to me after a show.” Although the hype machine shows no signs of slowing, she can rest assured that in her album she has enough quality pop songs to back up the buzz.
