You’d be forgiven for having low expectations of Swedish pop sensation Lykke Li’s live performance. Her album, Youth Novels, is a catchy collection of synth-pop whistles and beeps and solid beats, but it’s not quite fast or hard-hitting enough to facilitate serious dancing. Friday night’s show at the Phoenix was a different story, revealing a live potential barely hinted at in the studio album.

The first 30 seconds of "Melodies & Desires" open Li's show, segueing into a bass-heavy rendition of "Dance Dance Dance." Li’s stage presence is immediately obvious; she leaps over the microphone cord, dancing with her arms and employing various noise-making props — a tambourine, a tiny keyboard and, on two pleasing occasions, a megaphone.



"Let It Fall" and "Complaint Department" are pounding, foot-to-the-floor numbers, where their studio equivalents are slower and less insistent. Li’s voice, distant to the point of indifference throughout Youth Novels, is lower and more immediate in the flesh, hammering home every lyric.

Even the bare-bones backdrop — a sheet of black cloth with “Lykke Li” in white behind the stage — adds to the atmosphere of the show, giving it a warehouse dance-party feel. Lykke Li and her band don’t quite get the crowd jumping up and down the way they seem to be shooting for, but despite the sizable too-cool-to-dance scenester faction in attendance, the majority are with the band right to the end, sticking it out through an encore track ("My") that drags out longer than it really needs to.

Li checks in regularly with her audience, engaging them and pulling them along with her. At one point she announces that she wouldn’t usually do this, but she’s going to play a song she’s just written. It’s a haunting, reverberating synth number whose refrain silences the room; it’s clear though from the song’s polish that “just written” doesn't quite mean “earlier tonight.” It’s a reminder that the performer/audience boundary is well in effect: whatever Li says and whatever she and her bandmates bring tonight, it’s all part of the show.

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