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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 

