El Perro Del Mar/Lykke Li @ Schuba’s – 5.12.08

Tweet

Ah, the Swedish Invasion, what will you bring us next? Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be awesome. Anyway, checked out the El Perro Del Mar/Lykke Li/Anna Ternheim Swedish triple bill last night at Schuba’s and it was pretty awesome. There is a current trend of a lot of Swedish artists getting popularity and notoriety over here in the States (Jens Lekman, PB&J, Shout Out Louds) with their old school 60s hitmaker kinds of jams that are really an awesome throwback to the way music was back then. There is a lot of creativity and collaboration involved, and there is not really any of the pretentiousness you can see in a lot of bands in the US and UK currently. It is just a different kind of vibe from these bands.

Anyway, Anna Ternheim came up first and she was great. I got the impression that she is probably fairly popular back in Sweden, because she referenced playing with an orchestra, and she has several albums out already. She was quite good, and was very proud of her songs, which is always cool to see. You don’t really see many people introducing their songs or explaining what they’re about anymore, so that was nice.

Shortly after she finished, Lykke Li came to the stage. Lykke has been one of the big buzz artists so far this year, getting a lot of attention for her song “Little Bit”. She has an album out in Sweden that is yet unreleased in the US or UK (it will be released in the UK on June 9, no US date announced) called “Youth Novels“, that is produced by Bjorn of Peter, Bjorn & John (just like Shout Out Louds record I wrote about yesterday), but it has received rave reviews for those that have heard it. There was certainly a big crowd there early to check her out, and the crowd was not disappointed one bit. She was incredible. There are people in the world who, from the moment they set foot on the stage, just command the audience’s attention and just have them hook, line and sinker right from the start. This is one of those people. From the opening tinges of “Dance, Dance, Dance” you could just tell this was something special. With her throaty, yet eclectic kind of singing, she made all of the songs just come to life, and you could just tell the audience was hanging on every note she had to sing to them. On one song with a vocal outro, you could hear a pin drop as she sang the last few bars of the song, everyone was listening so intently. She hit the songs from the EP, and quite a few that I assume are from the album, and they were all incredible. She was singing to people in the crowd, dancing around on stage giving coquettish looks to the crowd, doing the sprinkler dance for one song, and just generally tearing up the stage. Some people are just born to be on stage, and they just eat it up and revel in it, and that describes her to a T. And she just has such a great, fun presence on stage that it really draws you in to the show. Not many people can handle the stage this well at such a fresh stage of their career. Needless to say, I think she absolutely killed. Unfortunately, as I said above, the album is not available here in the US yet (hopefully soon), so hopefully as the summer goes on, we will at some point get a US release of the album and another tour from Lykke.

After Lykke, fellow Swedish songstress Sarah Assbring (AKA El Perro Del Mar) came up. From what I had heard of her stuff and from show reviews, I was under the impression that her set was a little more of low key, subdued affair (read: a downer) compared to Lykke. I really don’t agree. I was actually pretty impressed with how upbeat her set was. There certainly were some slow acoustic kinds of songs in there, but there were equally as many uptempo 60s doo-wop kinds of songs as well that had a great energy, and great harmonies. Whereas Lykke certainly has a more modern flavor to her music, El Perro Del Mar’s really equates very well with the old 1960s big production kinds of songs (like Jens Lekman) that we saw from the likes of Phil Spector back in the day. She brought Lykke up on stage for a few songs, including the encore, and for those songs you could really tell it went to another level. I was semi-starstruck when Lykke was standing behind me waiting to go back on stage with El Perro Del Mar (at Schuba’s there is no backstage so the artists get to the stage via the crowd), and you could hear some people saying “oh there she is, omg”. El Perro Del Mar’s band was really good as well, and really filled up the room with sweet harmonies. Schuba’s was really a perfect place to see a show like this, with very basic instrumentation and rhythms played with great precision and timing, and it all came together perfectly.

It looks like this joint tour is going for a little bit longer, and I would say if you dig the songs at all, even a little bit, go see these shows if you can, because it is a great opportunity to see an up and comer who just has all the right things going for her to make it big. Lykke certainly won me over with this show big time, and it really seems like she just has such a great stage quality and ability that if she just keeps it going, people are bound to see it and start showing up in droves.

El Perro Del Mar tour dates:
May 14 2008 8:00P Red Room w/ Lykke Li Vancouver, British Columbia
May 15 2008 8:00P Triple Door w/ Lykke Li Seattle, Washington
May 16 2008 8:00P Doug Fir w/ Lykke Li Portland, Oregon
May 18 2008 8:00P Bimbo’s w/ Lykke Li San Fransisco, California
May 19 2008 8:00P El Rey Theatre w/ Lykke Li Los Angeles, California
May 31 2008 8:00P Siesta Hässleholm
Jun 1 2008 8:00P Blue Flowers w/ Lykke Li London
Jun 2 2008 8:00P Night & Day w/ Lykke Li Manchester
Jun 3 2008 8:00P Hi-Fi Club w/ Lykke Li Leeds
Jun 6 2008 8:00P Albert w/ Lykke Li Brighton
Jun 7 2008 8:00P Stealth w/ Lykke Li Nottingham
Jun 8 2008 8:00P King Tuts w/ Lykke Li Glasgow
Jun 10 2008 8:00P Jericho Tavern w/ Lykke Li Oxford
Jun 11 2008 8:00P ICA w/ Lykke Li London
Jun 12 2008 8:00P Sugar Club Dublin
Jun 25 2008 8:00P Accelerator Stockholm
Jul 4 2008 8:00P Arvikafestivalen Arvika

Lykke Li tour dates (including basically all of the above):
Jun 14 2008 8:00P Hultsfred Festival Hultsfred
Jul 3 2008 8:00P Quart Festival Norway
Jul 4 2008 8:00P Arvika Festivalen Arvika
Jul 5 2008 8:00P Roskilde Festival Roskilde
Jul 6 2008 8:00P Eurockeennes Festival Belfort
Jul 31 2008 8:00P Storsjöyran Ostersund
Aug 7 2008 8:00P Öya Festival Oslo
Aug 8 2008 8:00P Haldern Festival Lower Rhine
Aug 9 2008 8:00P Way Out West Göteborg
Sep 5 2008 8:00P Bestival Isle Of Wight

El Perro Del Mar – How Did We Forget – From From The Valley To The Stars
Lykke Li – Dance, Dance, Dance – From Little Bit [EP]