Lana Del Rey plays to adoring fans at the Echo Arena, Liverpool but struggles to impose herself in this large hall
Lana Del Rey Echo Arena, Liverpool
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Lana Del Rey is a study in contradictions. She has released four albums in six years since breaking through with Video Games, the first of many ballads suffused with retro glamour. But when it comes to performing, she prefers to make herself scarce. Her idea of a European tour is to play one night in Krakow, one in Glasgow, and this one in Liverpool.
She made her name by dressing to kill – a mournful beauty in a white mini-dress. That look is on show tonight, worn by a girl in the queue for the Mersey Eats stall. She even has a tiara of flowers painstakingly entwined in her hair. But Lana herself has moved on, taking to the stage in jeans and a sweater. That girl must feel as if she’s tottered along to a party in her high heels, only to find the hostess opening the door in bare feet.
Lana’s voice, always good at playing the little girl lost, has acquired some power. Early on she sings Blue Jeans and Born To Die, mixing honey and vinegar, sorrow and drama
Up to now, I’ve seen Lana only at festivals – Latitude 2012 and Glastonbury 2014 – where she played in daylight and struggled to hold the attention. Will it make all the difference being indoors, in the dark, in the warm embrace of her own fans?
The darkness suits her sultry sound for sure, although we could do with a little less of it on stage: in her black jeans and top, Lana is sometimes elegant to the point of being invisible. The crowd, mostly aged 15 to 25, are adoring, greeting her with screams and often singing along.
The darkness suits her sultry sound for sure, although we could do with a little less of it on stage: in her black jeans and top, Lana is sometimes elegant to the point of being invisible
Lana’s voice, always good at playing the little girl lost, has acquired some power. Early on she sings Blue Jeans and Born To Die, mixing honey and vinegar, sorrow and drama. These are old songs but the new ones, sparingly used, stand up well. She has an ear for a tune and the pipes to do it justice, even singing a cappella on the recent single Love.
What she still doesn’t have is a way of imposing herself. A big hall demands a big presence, and even when she criss-crosses the stage, her movement is tentative. You don’t have to dance but you do have to be definite.
The music is good enough, both dreamy and punchy, but it would be better still if she was playing a club, with more atmosphere and less acreage.
After 75 minutes she’s gone, with a wave and a wiggle, leaving us, as ever, wanting more.
THIS WEEK'S CD RELEASES
Jake Bugg Hearts That Strain Virgin EMI out Friday
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Jake Bugg’s scatterbrained third album bounced from glum folk to hip-hop and stalled his ascent from Nottingham council estate to youthful stardom. On his sometimes sweet, sometimes surly fourth, he’s still unaccountably dour for a 23-year-old seeing the world, but the musical themes hang together better. Recorded in Nashville, this is classicist singer-songwriter pop with traces of 1970s Laurel Canyon on How Soon The Dawn, southern soul on Waiting and ominous melodrama on the title track.
LCD Soundsystem American Dream Columbia out Friday
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It’s six years since New York’s art-disco heroes LCD Soundsystem split with a farewell party at Madison Square Garden, but no one who loves them ought to object to them reuniting for a fourth album. They still charismatically channel a record collection’s worth of hip influences – late Seventies Bowie, Talking Heads, all kinds of electronic music – with a particular talent for the epic, as on philosophical dancefloor thumper Tonite and seven-minute charger Call The Police.
Mogwai Every Country’s Sun Rock Action out Friday
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Mogwai, Glasgow’s premier instrumental rockers, have learnt a lot since the days of their youth, when every song started ominously quiet, then prowled up the dial until your ears melted. On Every Country’s Sun, their ninth album, not counting EPs and soundtracks, their arsenal includes gliding anthems (Crossing The Road Material), New Order-ish pop songs with real singing (Party In The Dark), elegant minimalism (Aka 47) and, of course, those old-fashioned ear-melters (Battered At A Scramble).
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