If Lykke Li could go anywhere with anyone for the rest of time, it would be on a sailboat going into the unknown with all her best friends and family. She doesn’t even really know how to sail. “I just imagine it would be quite romantic,” she says. This tendency towards the sentimental and poetic carries over into her music. The tour for her melancholic sophomore album, Wounded Rhymes has been ongoing since last July and will finally end in New Orleans on Monday night at Tipitina’s. “I’m so excited to go. It’s amazing, very symbolic,” she says about her very first trip to the Big Easy.
The making of Wounded Rhymes sounds like a spiritual journey when Li talks about it. “I went to the house in California, and I had a piano and tried to heal. I watched a lot of films and I cooked food and walked, read books. Slowly, I had so much to say that I started writing again.” The album has grown from the light, sugary pop sounds of Youth Novels into grittier vocals and darker, moodier lyrics that are the result of her California cabin isolation. The development in her musical style is noticeable, but Li doesn’t want to analyze herself in the moment. She wants it to all happen organically.
“It’s still growing and I still haven’t found the perfect way to write a song. It’s an evolution. I’m still in it. It’s too early to look back on, but maybe in 20 years I’ll do that. I follow my heart. My heart takes me to different places and I just try to listen to that. There’s no plan.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ydbyAkK-E[/youtube]
In addition to music, she is stretching herself to film as well. She collaborated with friend and director Moses Berkson on the film Solarium right before she began writing her album. The short, black and white, silent film is filled with dramatic tribal music, mirrors, and lots of sand. “It was kind of an improvised moment,” Li says. “We brought another friend of mine who is an artist who brought a lot of those mirrors. We brought some stuff and improvised.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZYbEL06lEU[/youtube]
She has collaborated with quite a few other artists besides Berkson, such as N.A.S.A., Drake, Rovksopp, Santigold, Kanye West and Kings of Leon, but she still has more she wants to do. “I would love to write a song with Bon Iver. That’s probably who I want to work with the most.” Her resume has a few positive surprises on it, such as her track “Possibility” appearing on the soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and “I Follow Rivers” on the TV show Glee. One wouldn’t expect her music to hit mainstream portals like the vampire phenomenon, but Li finds it all irrelevant. “It’s the society we live in these days,” she says. “I can’t predict what’s popular or not, but I think it’s a good thing that people listen to my music.”
Lykke Li performs Monday at Tipitina’s with First Aid Kit opening. Doors open at 8 p.m.; the show starts at 9. Tickets are on sale now.
