Tove Lo w/ Phoebe Ryan at First Avenue, Minneapolis (15 Feb 2017)

It was a sold-out night for the cool girls of every kind—

Stockholm dance-pop singer-songwriter Tove Lo made a triumphant return to First Avenue’s Mainroom, in support of Lady Wood (Island Records), her second full-length release, with a booty-shaking, provocative, and literally revealing performance in front of an all-ages crowd. 

Emerald-haired indie-pop newcomer Phoebe Ryan opened the evening with a fun and lighthearted short set, mostly culled from her 2015 debut EP, Mine (Columbia Records) with new album expected in 2017.  Comparable to Brooklyn’s Oh, Honey and Melanie Martinez (both of which she has written songs for), she kicked things off with the title track from the EP, before telling a story of her high school ex-boyfriend getting engaged the day before… to someone else. 

With that, she next went into ‘We Won’t’, a collaboration done originally with Jaymes Young and its lyric “we won’t, so just don’t”, obviously fresh in her mind from hearing the news.  Quickly shaking it off, she and her three bandmates next went into her R. Kelly/Miguel mashup that has become a YouTube sensation with the new ‘Be Real’ and collaboration with The Chainsmokers, ‘All We Know’ following. 

Despite the bad, she still sees the good, as on latest single ‘Dark Side’ singing, “At your worst, you’re the best”- that curious lyrical dichotomy whetting appetites for her full-length to come.

In front of a black backdrop with an enlarged and stylized “o” from her album cover (on the bass drumhead too) and amidst some forty vertical lights that would flicker in different colors and impressively flash like falling rain, Tove Lo took to the stage wearing a cinched up Beatles t-shirt and in tight yellow zippered racing pants, adorned with album’s title on the back cheeks and the album’s two chapters, Fairy Dust and Fire Fade, down each leg. 

Like many Swedish dance pop acts, her three-person band included two on percussion with a keyboardist rounding out the group.  Fairy Dust refers to the emotional curve of anticipation and euphoria, marked by slower jams, and how she opened with ‘True Disaster’ and the album’s title track. 

Reaching back to 2014’s platinum Queen of the Clouds, fans responded to the anthemic ‘Moments’ and the unapologetic ‘The Way I Am’, with its lyric, “I have been told I am the problem, and the problem’s my honesty”, which succinctly sums up her often brutally direct lyrics, often peppered with profanities to help get the point across. 

“It’s SO good to be back here!” she paused, remembering the sold-out show here from her last tour, continuing the good feelings with ‘Vibes’, a song written on a sailboat off the coast in Nicaragua. “We’re gonna talk some ‘Bodies’!” she announced, getting a roar from the crowd, who also sang along with the hit’s chorus.  True to form, at the bridge of the song and near the front of the crowd, she quickly flashed the crowd, her statement of female empowerment regarding the song. 

A solo and spare ‘Imaginary Friend’ was a set highlight, with Lo alone on piano, reminiscent of her earliest days when she performed without any accompaniment.

The instrumental break of ‘Fire Fade’ took us into the second half of the show, marking a subsequent feeling of self-awareness after the initial Fairy Dust, and leading with the exposed tone of ‘Keep it Simple’.  The new album’s closer, ‘WTF Love Is’ was a classic, confident example of Lo stating exactly what she wants.   

‘Flashes’ about “trying to figure out what’s real or not” led into the new album’s lead single, ‘Cool Girl’ about inviting an open relationship and was actually inspired by the lead character in the film ‘Gone Girl’. 

The encore began with ‘What I Want for the Night’, a relative rarity as it appears only on the short Lady Wood promo film and is a straight-ahead account of her expectations, and also what she thinks of certain other girls. 

Biggest hit, the 5x platinum in the U.S. hit, ‘Habits’ closed the evening, the crowd more than happy to sing the chorus over the band, gleeful to hear Lo’s biggest breakthrough as an exclamation point on her eighty-minute set.  Cool girls and everyone else, swooned to Tove Lo, empowered in her confidence and the ability to say what’s exactly on her mind.