Lykke Li on Taking Ayahuasca and Her New Album “Dark and Dirty”. Eyeye, a “dark and unclean” audio-visual album inspired by Lars von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn’s films, is the return of the Swedish singer-songwriter. She tells Gemma Samways about converting her music into a film.
A lovers’ dispute; two naked dancers entwined; LA’s nocturnal sprawl; a bloodied woman rescued from a car wreckage Eyeye, the palindromic, noir-inspired audio-visual project of Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li, has burned these images into your mind. It’s an intoxicating fever dream with no obvious end or start, hewn from hazy, looping vignettes and beautifully accentuated by bruised, Eno-inspired synthscapes plucked from the accompanying LP, shot on 16mm film by A Single Man cinematographer Edu Grau, directed by Theo Lindquist, and starring Li opposite Unorthodox’s Jeff Wilbusch.
You’d be right if you thought Li’s latest album, So Sad So Sexy, was a step back in terms of slick R&B and trap-inspired swagger. The 36-year-old frames her artistic evolution as an exorcism, speaking from her home in Los Angeles today. “I had to let my blonde hair grow out and live in two white T-shirts and two pairs of white painter’s pants to get rid of the red, patent leather character of So Sad So Sexy — simply so I could become a blank canvas again.” In her place is a “silent actress/gangster taken from an Ingmar Bergman film, via Michael Mann’s Heat,” according to her.
Li, a self-professed cinephile, proudly lists Breaking the Waves and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy as influences for today’s fatal love story, as well as Last Tango in Paris and Requiem for a Dream. These incredibly dark and dramatic moments serve as a forewarning for the eight-track album that will be released alongside the short films, which will contain some of Li’s most emotionally raw and gratifying material to date.
Li pulled the songwriting process back to its bare bones in her living room in LA with long-time collaborator Björn Yttling, shunning computerized instruments and including first-take vocals where possible to maintain the emotional essence of the work. It’s the definitive word on the subject for a musician who has made heartbreak her calling card, and it’s being touted as a “breakup with the breakup album.”
Li recounts how Pina Bausch, a love dream obsession, and ayahuasca journeys influenced the creation of Eyeye’s world.
