Lykke Li vs Peaches

The following entry was drafted on the way to Kelvin Grove in torrential rain this morning...



Incongruous. 'Dance Dance Dance'. Listening to Lykke Li's balanced dance poise in a steamed-up bus, tropical rain belting down, roads flooded. She sounds so hopeful, so young and full of potential, so Swedish, so in control of her own destiny...Those dancefloor beats throbbing. That insistent voice pleading. Those hints of intimacy and threats of hedonism. That Talking Heads bass.

This is probably the opposite to the way her marketing agents want her to be perceived - huddled vulenerable in a cold corner of the nightclub as the lights flash, the teen MySpace anthesis to Peaches, a girl yr parents would be very pleased to meet., cheeky but never disrespectful. Yet her music is so polished with its manipulative sheen and elegant wistfulness. Don't misunderstand me. I'm a fan (and of Peaches, too). I've long delighted in Pet Shop Boys, in 'The Winner Takes It All'. There's enough pathos here for me, easy.

I interviewed Lykke Li face-to-face shortly before she performed at the Falls Festival in Victoria earlier this year, and was amazed at the transformation. In the space of a few short hours she turned into a sex kitten-esque indie heartthrob. (She certainly wasn't like that while interacting with me!) So professional. Whereas the first, and only time I interviewed Kate Nash - shortly before a show at Brighton's Concorde II, after her Number One album - she was an extension of the self she portrayed on stage, slightly dorky but adorable (um, -ish). Perhaps the context was wrong. In Victoria, I was another local journalist to be dealt with.

In Brighton, on my home turf, I was given the opportunity to shine.