All Time Top 100

Monday, October 01, 2007

Robyn - Audio

Robyn was a child star in her native Sweden at 13 and despite scoring an international hit in 1997 with ‘Show Me Love’ she’s never really converted, batted repeatedly between majors attempting to mould her into whichever unit shifting pop tart was hogging the charts at the time.

Things changed in 2003 when she fell in with fellow Swedes ‘The Knife’ and producer Klas Ahlund. Sensing her moment had arrived, she piled her life savings into her eponymous LP and set up her own ‘Konichiwa’ label to release it on. A bit of a gamble then, and one that despite a fistful of acclaimed festival appearances and the patronage of heavy hitters Rob Da Bank and Jo Wiley, a gamble that is yet to pay off - the mega stardom for which she was tipped in January apparently some way off yet.

It’s surely just a matter of time though and Robyn clearly felt she had a point to prove at Audio on Wednesday. She bounded onstage and from Go to O was ducking and weaving like a Vegas prize-fighter, tossing her perfectly coiffured mega fringe about and working the entire crowd from left to right. She looked every bit the platinum pop star and sung like one too, her vocals pitch perfect throughout. She’s blessed with a versatile and hugely expressive voice, kissing you off one minute with all the insouciance of the coolest kid in the playground nicking your lollipops and kicking sand in your face. Then the next, she’s got you sobbing into your pint pot with impassioned tearjerkers like “With Every Heartbeat.”

Her signature track ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ was the highlight of the set: a perfect synthesis of the cutesy, lithe and the deadly, and it packed a substantial lyrical punch with its torrent of biting put-downs and sensational bombast. Brutal in its high impact minimalism, her drummer deftly layered up its tight, precision-point percussion until the whole venue was writhing and grinding as one.

She wrapped up the set with a stripped down version of ‘With Every Heart Beat’ and had her adoring crowd wave their cameras and phones like they were in the presence of a solid gold pop legend. Not quite yet – but a year or so from now….just maybe.

posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:36 PM

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