Music
Lorde seems to shrug off the burden of expectation and grows her sound at her own pace, while Ride pick up where they left off 20 years ago
Album reviews, plus Jim Gilchrist previews the East Neuk Festival
Forget about all those teenage hopefuls on reality TV shows with stars in their eyes, dreams in their hearts and desperation in their gut – Ella Yelich-o’connor, better known by her stage name Lorde, really did go from nowhere to somewhere seemingly overnight, thanks to a smart little ditty called Royals. This instant pop classic, audacious in its simplicity, was a rallying cry by a teenager for teenagers, capturing that invincible you-and-me-versus-the-world mentality which is so seductive and comforting for anyone who feels a little out-on-a-limb.
Lorde herself wasn’t like other girl pop stars, being an intense, overly serious quasi-goth outsider from a small town in New Zealand. This precocious writer/performer was described by no less an arbiter than David Bowie as “the future of music”. He popped up at her 17th birthday party, as you do; she was later invited to front the Bowie tribute at last year’s Brit Awards.
Melodrama is her long-awaited document of “the last two wild, fluorescent years of my life”. That quote alone tells you that Lorde has a mildly pretentious way with words, and there’s an unusual artist straining to be heard through the layers of production, generic soundscapes and overdubbed vocals which conspire to dilute her theatrical tendencies.
Green Light is a moderately quirky and propulsive dance pop track about partying back from heartbreak, and she’s got her gang around her, avowing there “ain’t a pill that can touch our rush” on Sober .Bythe closing Perfect Places, she has sobered up but smiles at the memory of “all the nights spent off our faces, trying to find these perfect places”.
In the interim, she takes deft snapshots of significant relationships on the flinty Hard Feelings ,the clipped, compressed house track
Supercut and the state-of-the-art sonic collage of The Louvre (“they’ll hang us in the Louvre, down the back but who cares, still the Louvre”). However, nothing resonates as much as the sparse piano ballad Writer in
the Dark, where her soaring vocal strongly evokes that other innovative teen writer, Kate Bush.
In 2014, Royal Blood’s self-titled debut took rock music back to the top of the album charts for the first time in too long, and did so without the aid of a guitar. This bass/drums duo have their fuzz pedals in a row once again on the similarly efficient How Did We
Get So Dark? which follows a familiar blueprint rather than retilting the formula like Muse or The White Stripes before them, toying with glam rock on Look Like You Know, classic rock riffing on Hook, Line &
Sinker and a spot of doomy Sabbath riffola on Where Are You Now? It’s the equivalent of a Motörhead T-shirt purchased from Top Shop, stylish but with something missing where the sweat stains should be.
Oxford indie dons Ride were stalwarts of the shoegaze scene of the early 1990s, characterised by wispy vocals and lashings of guitar effects, before guitarist Andy Bell went off to join Oasis and latterly Beady Eye. Weather Diaries is the quartet’s first album in over 20 years and it’s a decently diverse effort, mixing in motorik rhythms and analogue synth to Lannoy Point, teaming chiming gothic guitar with chunky rhythmic gear changes on Charm Assault and floating serenely in Pink Floyd’s prog pond on Home Is A Feeling. The lyrics are apparently tainted by Brexit, but delivered with a sigh rather than a cry, and it all starts to sound flaccid when the pace drops below driving.
It’s the equivalent of a Motörhead T-shirt purchased from Top Shop, stylish but with something missing where the sweat stains should be