Lykke Li sizzles at the Greek Theatre

Kevin Bronson on
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By the time Lykke Li got to the slow-burning “I Know Places” midway through her set Wednesday at Greek Theatre, you didn’t know whether she was boxing with her demons or dancing with them. One thing for sure, though: The demons don’t have a chance.

At once an exorcism and concert, Li’s 75-minute turn in front of a sold-out amphitheater revealed a wide range of emotions – in return, the 25-year-old Swedish songstress got nothing but love – all of which she turned into grand theater. Amid pillars of black curtains, fronting a black-clad six-piece band that encircled her, she wore a black cape and cavorted around the stage as if possessed, pugilist one moment and high priestess the next. Damaged goods, healing right before your very eyes.

The fodder for this catharsis were the songs off her new album “Wounded Rhymes,” imagined during a period of solitude in the California desert and recorded with Bjorn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John. Expansive both conceptually than sonically, the material finds Li moving beyond the blissful naiveté of her debut “Youth Novels” and, while still keeping cynicism at arm’s length, acknowledging the oncoming meleé between head, heart and hormones.

Not that she is one to go quietly into the night. In a collision of the singer’s coo, heavenly harmonies and fierce rhythms, Li’s set shimmered with a tribal ferocity, setting the tone early with “Jerome” and “Sadness Is a Blessing” and getting the audience off their fannies with the main-set finisher “Get Some.” The strobe lights did their job too, but mostly Wednesday night belonged to Li, in the light then in the dark, and rather spectacularly and mysteriously soundtracking the journey in between.

In contrast to Li’s sweeping headlining set, L.A.’s mystifyingly popular Best Coast preceded with 30 minutes of one-note fuzz-pop, with Bethany Cosentino groaning through some songs and swallowing others while guitarist Bobb Bruno valiantly tried to inject some musicality into the proceedings.

Opening the night was Fool’s Gold, the L.A. band whose sophomore album “Leave No Trace” comes out next week. Now pared down to a quintet from its origins as an 11-or-so-piece collective, Fool’s Gold served as something of the happy-hour umbrella drink for the evening – colorful and frothy, with Luke Top’s full-throated vocals, Lewis Pesacov’s pointillist guitar and the polyrhythms of Garrett Ray and Salvador Placencia shining brightly in the gathering dusk.

||| Live: Lykke Li plays Nov. 7 at the Fox Theater in Pomona.