NEW YORK � Swedish pop phenom and possible Stateside star-to-be Lykke Li played the second date of a U.S. minitour on Thursday night, a sold-out show at a Greenwich Village nightclub. The crowd seemed very NYU, and many of them were vocalizing along to the songs. This was no grand surprise: Li's debut record album, the fulgurant Youth Novels, was exclusively released in this country last week, but her various European videos receive already scored more than 2-million hits on YouTube.
Li's record was produced by Bj�rn Yttling, of Peter Bj�rn and John, world Health Organization also helps craft the songs she writes. The sound is stripped down and the music is hard � impossible, actually � to label. It's irresistibly danceable (Li is a big hip-hop winnow), but it's not "dance music." It has the rhythmic biff and melodic propulsion of rock (her mother was a member of an all-girl punk band back in the '80s), just it's non strictly "rock music" either. The record album also contains one of the year's most ravishing ballads � a path called "Tonight" � which makes her work all the harder to pin down. (Li's name, by the direction, is marked "Licky-lee," and uttered as if it were one word.)
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