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Thursday, June 22, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
Lorde is ethereal perfection at album release
show in New York
By CHRISTIAN KENNEDY
Online Arts Editor
AVERY FRIEDMAN
Daily Arts Writer
A mood hung over Manhat-
tan last Friday — maybe due to
the low grey clouds mixed with
summer humidity — but weather
notwithstanding, it was bound to
be a Melodramatic day as Lorde’s
second
LP
filled
the
space
between the headphones and ear
drums of morning commuters
with magic. About 12 hours later
she would fill Bowery Ballroom
with that same magic.
The dichotomy of a day at the
office blurred by monotony and
a night of the town blurred by
youth (and various substances)
isn’t lost on Lorde or her fans;
the ephemeralness of youth and
inescapability of adulthood can
be heard on Melodrama front to
back. When the lights went down,
a sliver of light shone through
the cracked stage door and those
lucky to be close enough got a
glimpse of Lorde (real name Ella
Yelich-O’Connor) amping her-
self up, jumping around in white
Adidas tennis shoes. Opening the
show with “Homemade Dyna-
mite” (one of Melodrama’s many
highlights), Lorde appropriately
sets expectations: quickly flow-
ing pre-choruses that melt into
luscious refrains to keep all the
dancers in the crowd on their
toes.
Lorde continued through her
release-day show with an excit-
able effortlessness. Her visible
giddiness from sharing songs
that once belonged to only her
combined with her signature,
flailing
dance
moves
served
up an inarguable authenticity.
Flexing all of her performative
muscles, Lorde shifted between
moments of live magic at the
hands of nuanced production
(the seconds of quiet in “The
Louvre”) and open connection
with the crowd via gut-wrench-
ing lyrics (one attendee sobbed
during “Liability”). “Everyone
leaves,” she said of her thoughts
while writing the latter.
But the 20-year-old’s ability
to infuse the air with her energy,
through her music, is nearly
unmatched in music’s current
landscape, which became clear
during an a capella encore of “Writ-
er In the Dark.” Quieting a scream-
ing crowd, she began without a mic
except when it would pick up her
echo as she moved from one side
of the stage to another. Exuding
power and confidence, she shushed
the front row of a packed Bowery
Ballroom so even those in the back
could hear the raw, unplugged
delivery. It has always been clear
that Lorde is an extremely talented
writer and artist, but her perfor-
mance of “Writer In the Dark”
showcased an emotive strength of
voice to be reckoned with.
The magic of Lorde, Melodrama
and the show rests with feeling: the
tingling rush of new love, the dull,
prolonged sting of loneliness, the
fear that “someday” might actually
be today and the restlessness in try-
ing to make sense of them all.
— Christian Kennedy
It wasn’t long after I found out
I’d be spending a few hot months
in New York City that I estab-
lished my primary goal for the
summer: befriend Ella Yelich-
O’Connor, a.k.a Lorde. Before the
singer’s anthemic single “Green-
light” dropped in March, I hadn’t
considered myself a superfan,
but let’s just say that Lorde’s new
heartbroken-twentysomething-
spends-summer-in-the-city aes-
thetic hit home and cemented
“Greenlight,” and consequently
the rest her new album, as sta-
ples within the soundtrack of my
subway commutes.
Last Friday afternoon, I was
at work attempting (unsuccess-
fully) to write a coherent article
while taking in the magnitude
of the just-released Melodrama,
when Christian (see above) text-
ed me: “OMFG Lorde is doing a
show at the Bowery Ballroom
tonight.” Lorde had tweeted
about the show in New York just
hours before she was set to take
the stage; And after a couple of
frantic emails and eventually
just showing up, we managed to
find ourselves in the second-row
of the sensual Bowery Ballroom,
just one really-long-arm’s-length
from the stage.
The surrounding crowd was a
mixed bag of characters tethered
together by a common radiat-
ing enamoredness with Lorde.
Throughout the evening, two
different audience members told
me, “Pure Heroine is the only
reason I made it through high
school.” A fifty-something year-
old man to my left glanced at his
fourteen year-old daughter, an
aspiring musician, and said, “You
know, we have immense respect
for Lorde, she’s really an inspi-
ration for my daughter.” To my
right, a mid-twenties Brooklyn-
based music blogger anxiously
clutched a thick packet of papers:
an old college essay about Lorde
that he planned to toss onto the
stage. Lorde’s crowds aren’t
limited to one demographic, but
rather a diverse group of individ-
uals who feel an intense, electric
kinship with the artist.
Across
ages,
genders
and
sexual orientations, there was a
deliberate, almost studious dedi-
cation in the way we sang word-
for-word the lyrics of Melodrama
tracks that had been released
only a few hours earlier; just as
there was an instinctual, vis-
ceral way in which some wept
as Lorde sat and crooned “Lia-
bility” at the stoop of the stage.
That’s the thing about Lorde — at
only 20, she infuses her melodies
with a dangerous concoction of
intellectualism and emotional
insight that grants her special
access to our minds as well as
our hearts.
I walked out of the Bowery
Ballroom last Friday haunted by
the echoes of Lorde’s encore —
an acapella rendition of “Writer
in the Dark.” She had tenderly
hushed the crowd as she sang
in an octave that rang more like
a whimper: “I am my mother’s
child, I’ll love you ‘til my breath-
ing stops.” In that final chorus,
Lorde captured the essence of
her second album: the paradoxi-
cal coexistence of all-consuming
love and longing alongside a keen
awareness of the melodrama of
youth.
— Avery Friedman
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SIRIUS XM