I knew nothing about Monica Birkenes aka Mr. Little Jeans, but during her soundcheck at Amoeba, I realized she was the one who did this interesting cover of Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ a few years ago, and managed to get some good airplay on the radio. As she was wearing a long black skirt and a black top with a white collar, she might have looked like a sage schoolgirl entering catholic school had it not been for for her totally-Margot-Tenebaum dark eyeliner… And knowing that Mr Little Jeans is a name of a minor and humble character (the janitor) in Wes Anderson’s ‘Rushmore’, this makes complete sense. Plus, her bio says that she grew up in Grimstad, Norway, immersed in music and listening to Simon & Garfunkel records,… wow, Arcade Fire, Wes Anderson, Simon & Garfunkel, that’s awfully familiar territories for me, or is it smart marketing?
She was celebrating the release of her debut album ‘Pocket Knife’ with an in-store at Amoeba, and she was introduced as a synth-pop diva, but without behaving like a diva at all, she gave a short but bright and dynamic set in front of a big and enthusiastic crowd. Just backed-up by two musicians, her songs were uplifting while carrying their buoyancy with grace, as cute Monica was all-wide-eyed, still very impressed she was on this stage, with her music in the Amoeba staff’s recommended section. She was especially thrilled to tell us that the store was the first place she went to when she first arrived in Los Angeles. With so little people and instruments on stage, it was a sort of lo-fi affair, going crescendo and turning epic with even some children choir (the Silverlake Conservatory of Music Youth Chorale) during ‘Oh Sailor’… a really beautiful and heart-warming church-like song (according to her bio, she grew up in a church choir). Didn’t Nick Cave do that at the Fonda? Yes of course, I was there!
Her influences are apparently multiple, she cites Mariah Carey, PJ Harvey and Massive Attack, and the Lykke Li comparison is probably unavoidable considering their common Nordic origin and taste for synth pop, electro beats intertwined with layered 60s-like melodies. I sure did make the connection, but there also was a very personal touch, a very sweet child-like voice dancing above some very infectious disco floors or dense, dark atmospheric synth soundscapes. She did her sensual and forever expanding cover of ‘the Suburbs’, and she was sometimes stopping in the middle of a song to speak to the crowd as she did during ‘Runaway’, confusing people who were starting to clap and cheer.
If ‘Runaway’ sounded like a fluid electronica battered by rapid beats, ‘Rescue Song’ was a sweet earworm chorus. She closed her too-short set with the most infectious of her songs, ‘Good Mistake’, part dance-floor, part intimate number with indistinct lyrics as if they didn’t want to reveal too much of their darkness — ‘Blood on your hands/And your hands still roam/But your secret is safe with the garden gnome/Those marks on your neck never seem to fade’. However, this one saw everyone head banging between the CDs and vinyl rows. So is she the next Lykke Li, the next pop princess who is gonna sold out the Wiltern or the Fonda in a few seconds in a few years? It’s possible, the crowd at Amoeba was impressive and she has been living in Los Angeles for a few years, but with her gracious features and demeanor radiating wonderment, she looked more like a wide-eyed Dorothy coming back from the magical land of Oz than the next superstar.
More pictures of the show here.
