She debuted November 2006 and by October the following year Sweden’s Miss Li aka Linda Carlsson had released another two albums. Which really is a quite impressive creative output. So, in comparison she’s really been taking her time writing this fourth effort (although putting out a ‘Best Of’ last year).

I can’t judge whether that’s been a good idea or not, because this is actually the first time I wrap my ears around Carlsson’s music. What I can say, though, is that ‘Dancing The Whole Way Home’ is an incredibly charming album with her rather sexy voice and – again – incredibly charming diction (simply loving the way she makes “love” sound like “low” in the title track) the guiding fix-point throughout.

Over the years Miss Li has according to herself been singing “opera, musical, jazz, soul, pop, electro, blues, rock and even heavy metal” (guess it would’ve been easier to just say “everything”) and with her CO-writer Sonny Boy Gustafsson she has created an almost just as varied musical cocktail that impresses with its pop ability and excites with its vibrant gypsy-cabaret-Balkan expression.

Lyrically it’s just as varied, the ever-present love, good and bad, of course represented. However, here her crowing achievement is combining and moving effortlessly between serious matters like estranged teen suicide (‘I Heard Of A Girl’) and the autobiographic(?) ‘A Daughter Or A Son’ about a miscarriage in a hotel bathroom to funny comments on 55 year old men trying to pick up 18 year old girls (‘Dirty Old Man’) and our time’s obsession with plastic beauty in ‘Polythene Queen’.

On her MySpace Miss Li states: “To be honest, I don’t care what I sound like as long as it’s fun!” Well, you’re sounding great and it is indeed excellent fun…

Genre: Pop
Who: Miss Li
Album: Dancing The Whole Way Home
Label: National/Bonnier Music
Year: 2009
Country: Sweden
Language: English
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Recommended tracks:
I Heard Of A Girl – Dirty Old Man – Polythene Queen – Dancing The Whole Way Home – Bourgeois Shangri-La – Stupid Girl