Singer Tove Lo has been releasing sultry, at times raunchy indie-inspired pop tracks since her debut “Queen of the Clouds” back in 2014 launched her into stardom. On her latest record “Dirt Femme” the Swedish songwriter stands alone in a desert, donning a chrome scorpion tail on the album cover over a nude bodysuit, referencing her own nature as a Scorpio and evoking a futuristic post-Apocalyptic vibe that’s tied to her sensual nature. While she married her then-boyfriend Charlie Twaddle in July 2020, the domestic life has not slowed Tove Lo down from working on her signature brand of sexy, sweaty, dancy electropop.
SLAYYYTER
Slayyyter has been a star on the rise in the online sphere for the past few years with singles like “Mine” and “Daddy AF” especially getting featured in the A24 horror film “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” On stage, Slayyyter’s persona plays off the Y2K tropes and the visage of a blonde bimbo character. With her Vivian Ward bob hair, thigh high black boots, a SeekingArrangements.com tube dress covering a corset, she evokes images of Angelyne with Britney Spears’ bratpop delivery. While her music is playfully coy, Slayyyter’s presence is commanding even when occasionally concealing her winged eyes behind fashion forward sunglasses.
On tracks like the unreleased “Tommy” she whips her hair into a frenzy with an unbreakable, stoic confidence on her face. Vocally, Slayyyter’s affected and auto-tuned singing on the albums plays background to her live, unfiltered voice acting both as the lead singer and a personal hypewoman. Ripping through her set of tracks on her debut self-titled mixtape and her record “Troubled Paradise” which improves on her sludgy dance pop sound, I don’t think it will be long until Slayyyter comes back to Miami on her own headlining shows.
TOVE LO
A trio of musicians on guitar, drums and synthesizer emerge onto stage teasing the crowd with “Pineapple Slice,” a sinfully delightful song about the tropical fruit as an aphrodisiac. Tove Lo hits her marks, as she struts from the smoke and on-stage cloud cut-out designs while clad in a gold gladiator dress with white gogo boots that bring an image of Jane Fonda in “Barbarella.” Having last played South Florida in 2015, the singer more than made up for lost time by playing a slew of back to back dancepop bangers from the sweaty house track “disco tits” and the electric early hit “Talking Body.”
Switching gears, she swapped her golden corset for a sparkly teal tube top and dance skirt. A sea of phone lights lit up the singer as she performed a stripped down version of “Moments” where she describes the lyrics as the ethos of her whole career. Certainly, Tove Lo is “charming as fuck” in this moment where she bares her all on the stage. Her backing band, consisting of multi-instrumentalist Johan Salomonsson, Hovis on drums and Jonatan Larson on bass/synthesizer certainly hold their all in making the live arrangements truly electric. Riffing on her newfound domesticity, Tove Lo laments about not being a robotic Stepford Wife in the track “Suburbia.”
While not released on “Dirt Femme” she brought out the single “Borderline,” co-written by Dua Lipa and in her encore debuted the new track “I LIKE U” described as a “fucking dance banger, again, for the gays.” Indeed, so much of Tove Lo’s career has been bolstered by her primarily LGBTQ audience, exemplified by the singer appearing as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7, which lead to a massive epiphany over how “Tove Lo” is pronounced in the first place. Aware of the extremely mild controversy, the singer sells a tote bag with the phrase “Tove Lo/Tooveh Lu/Voulez Vous/Scooby Doo” at the merch table. Closing her show with her “Dirt Femme” single “No One Dies From Love,” Tove Lo kept the crowd on their toes every second of her show with an extremely electric show. Hopefully, it won’t be any longer until she returns to the Magic City again.
Tove Lo Setlist:
Pineapple Slice
Attention Whore
Cool Girl
Are U gonna tell her?
2 Die 4
Talking Body
Really Don’t Like U
disco tits
Moments (Acoustic)
True Romance
Grapefruit
Glad He’s Gone
Suburbia
Borderline
How Long
True Disaster
Encore:
stranger (Acoustic)
I Like U (New Song, Live Debut)
Habits (Stay High)
No One Dies From Love