Lykke Li - Village Underground, London 09/05/14

I have to wonder of the calibre of the man who left Lykke Li. After an alternative upbringing, she went to New York to record her first album aged 21. It took the world by storm. Since, the critical acclaim has been endless and her popularity and fame have soured. She has worked with the biggest names in music including Kings of Leon and Kanye West. And she’s beautiful, real beautiful. Her face has graced Vogue and launched Levi campaigns.

Yet tonight, she’s a shadow of her former self. Long gone is ‘sugar-coated’ Lykke Li, who I last saw skipping across a sun-drenched Glastonbury stage. Tonight she is in mourning. Her black jacket with huge batwings is mimicked by black netting that hangs from industrial metal beams. Back lighting spills elongated silhouettes across the walls. It’s eerie and mythical.

She opens with her title track, “I Never Learn” and so begins her “song of pain”. For many dumpees, rousing from beneath a darkened duvet is hard enough, but Lykke Li has bravely put her vulnerability on centre stage. Once you’ve overcome the desire to jump up and give her a long ol’ hug; it is captivating. Her voice is silvery and sharp and creaks with emotion. Swirling spotlights add a dramatic intensity. The crowd are still, but transfixed.

Her music has always tended towards the bleak end of the mood spectrum. Her second album Wounded Rhyme was hardly bubblegum pop, and even the lyrics of the sugar and spice sing-a-long “Little Bit” are guarded, protecting her “tainted heart”. But tonight, during the guilt-wracked “No Rest For The Wicked” and desperately destitute “Never Gonna Love Again”, melancholy seems an understatement.

Tonight, she clutches at the microphone, performing slow seductive cobra curls around it. At one point she warns: “I will try to sing this song, but I don’t know if I will succeed”. Speaking as someone whose heart is recently glued back together, her angst drew waves of compassion. Combined with the rippling and minimalistic electro, the room pulsed with emotion.

Her rendition of “Little Bit” was a darker version with extra lashings of reverb and bass drum that knocked it from its poppy perch and caused one fellow gig-goer to announce “it’s quite a contrast!”. Later for “I Follow Rivers”, the sexy shoe-gaze track that hit top spot in six countries, the stage is drenched in amber light. It feels like a warm sunrise bursting through the dark, and triggers a lively response from the crowd. It is a Friday night, they seem ready to rock.

Their enthusiasm was sustained as the tempo of the evening ramped up a notch. The booming and organ heavy “Rich Kids” with its zany vocals, was followed by the crowd chorus of “Heart of Steel”, floodlit in red. Next, “Youth Knows No Pain” saw rowdy sirens reverb around the cavernous venue.

Finally, the tribal “Get Some” brought a vibrant energy to the stage and the night to a bellowing crescendo. In this, Lykke Li is a fierce feminist, “I’ve got you wrapped around my finger”, and as the last note sounded, tambourine shaking high in the air, she seemed formidable again, her bleeding heart now pumping furiously in her chest.

• Photo by Jason Williamson. See the full gallery here.