Pure Heroine [LP] in Bloomington, MN

Signed to a major label at an early age, she was groomed in the darkness of studios, the label knowing the potential they had in their singer/songwriter. She wrote on her own, then she was paired with a sympathetic producer/songwriter, live performances taking a back seat to woodshedding. If this story in the early years of the 2010s brings to mind
Lana Del Rey
, it's no coincidence that it also applies to New Zealand singer/songwriter
Lorde
, whose 2013 debut,
Pure Heroine
, contains all of the stylized goth foreboding of
LDR
's
Born to Die
and almost none of the louche, languid glamour. This is not a small thing.
is a self-created starlet willing herself into stardom but
fancies herself a poet, churning away at the darker recesses of her soul. Some of this may be due to age.
, as any pre-release review or portrait helpfully illustrated, was only 16 when she wrote and recorded
with producer
Joel Little
, and an adolescent aggrievance and angst certainly underpin the songs here.
favors a tragic romanticism, an all-or-nothing melodrama that
Little
accentuates with his alternately moody and insistent productions. Where
favors a studiously detached irony,
pours it all out which, in itself, may be an act: her bedsit poetry is superficially more authentic but the music is certainly more pop, both in its construction -- there are big hooks in the choruses and verses -- and in the production, which accentuates a sad shimmer where everything is beautiful and broken. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine