Pure Heroine

Description

On her debut album, 16 year-old New Zealand singer-songwriter Ella Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde, has fashioned herself as a correspondent on the front lines of elegantly wasted post-digital youth culture and working-class suburban boredom.Pure Heroineis a collection of throbbing, moody, menacingly anesthetized pop.

More fully realized than her debut EPThe Love Club,Pure Heroineis a fluid collection of throbbing, moody, menacingly anesthetized pop that sometimes sounds likeSt. Vincents “Champagne Year” mixed into whatevers in the punch at Abel Tesfayes house. Still, a lot of its best production ideas and lyrical motifs repeat in such a way that it sometimes feels like youre listening to 10 versions of the same song. Current single “Team” has a memorable chorus, but most of its lyrics (“I’m kinda over being told to throw my hands up in the air”; “We live in cities you never see on screen/ Not very pretty but we sure know how to run things”) feel like scrapped lines from the “Royals” session. “Glory and Gore”, too, rehashes the same bloody/regal/teen imagery, but its greater crime is the way Lorde overstuffs the verses with so many words that it weighs down the melody. And yet, theres something endearing aboutPure Heroines more unfiltered impulsesthough shes had a record contract nearly a quarter of her life, you get the sense Lorde is still being given a lot of room to breathe and hone her own particular songwriting voice. These tracks all feel like they were written by a very precocious teenager, and thats a big part of their charm.

Pitchfork