Last night, Corban Goble and Ryan Dombal joined the off-white-teethed teens, some parents, a few little kids, and various other monochrome-clad youths to see Lorde's sold-out show at Manhattan's Roseland Ballroom. Read their post-gig discussion and check out YouTubes from the concert below.
Corban Goble: Let's get this out of the way first: I still get a kick out of the Lorde age truther thing because there really is something seemingly unnatural going on with the most famous 17-year-old on the planet. Last night’s show at Roseland emphasized that idea—she’s come an impossibly long way as a performer in a really small window of time. So maybe the question is not about her age, but… IS LORDE JUICING?! Speculation aside, I had a great time at the show, which was masterful in several ways.
Ryan Dombal: The show was amazing. And while Lorde didn't go the whole Mickey Mouse Club/child-star route, you can still see her working out her onstage skills in this video of her middle-school band Extreme covering Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio's prog rocker "Man on the Silver Mountain":
She was 12 there, but she could command a crowd even then. Last night, her skirt was made of black leather instead of tattered denim, and she didn't smile as much as before, but the charisma was intact. If anything, Lorde's quick maturation may not be unnatural as much as a new normal: If she was in her classic-rock phase at 12, she probably did the college-rock thing at 14, and is now basically defining smart poptimism at 17. Like, I know you're still riding for the Biebs post-deposition, but fact is Lorde probably put stuff like that behind her before she could chew.
CG:DON’T BRING HIS NAME UP AGAIN! OK?! Moving on. So much of Lorde's appeal at this point is about racing ahead—what's she going to do next?!—and after last night you can’t help but collapse from the exciting possibilities. Her new Son Lux collab “Easy (Switch Screens)”, which drew a quizzical reaction from the crowd, was a total stunner; as the track's searing guitar piped through (easily the show's most outré moment musically), Lorde dropped into a convulsing shadow amidst strobes of purple, blue, and turquoise. If Lorde’s way of doing things represents the future, we could be talking about the future of collaborations as we know them, like the eventual Lorde/Taylor SwiftWatch the Throne-style album that keeps me up at night. Didn’t they record part of WTT in Australia? I’ve heard New Zealand is close to Australia. Just connecting dots here.
And you know... We're on each other's team. #LORDE#CLEANINGUP#GRAMMYspic.twitter.com/jRwHkPYfPE
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) January 27, 2014RD: I knew it was only a matter of time until you got that Taylor Gang reference in there. And it is tempting to look ahead, partly because Lorde seems to be doing the same thing: While I couldn't make out all of her one stretch of mumbling banter thanks to an especially loud fan behind me who made ambulance noises through much of the concert, I believe Lorde was talking about getting older and how that scares the shit out of her. (It reminded me of Thom Yorke a little bit, and his obsessions with decay and death on The Bends.) But the little speech was also about embracing the present—she expressed genuine awe at the fact that she had sold out Roseland for three straight nights—and there was a lot to embrace at this show. One moment that stuck with me was her cover of the Replacements' "Swingin Party", which she started to sing while standing just outside of the centered blue spotlight. To hear hundreds of teens singing along to this song Paul Westerberg wrote in 1985 gave the moment a classic timelessness. Some things are always new to someone.
CG: The teens came in flocks, and Lorde was their shepherd. If Lorde had said, “Hey everyone, I’m gonna go walk off the Williamsburg Bridge!” I think everyone would have filed out in an orderly fashion and made the slow walk downtown, trailing their gold-caped leader. Also, that cape!
Photo via Supsean
RD: That dress made it look like she melted down tons of ancient royal crowns and refashioned them as some kind of billowing curtain. It was tremendous. I wish there was a similarly shiny shirt and/or wristband that I could have purchased… you know, for my... 13-year-old niece. Lorde's social media game is on point, but I have to say Beyoncé is running laps around her on the merch memes.
CG: No doubt. The only thing at Lorde’s merch table was a gray sweatshirt with “PURE HEROINE” stitched onto the top right corner. I’m sure people still bought it, but it has nothing on the entire warehouse of “SURFBOARD” tees Beyoncé is vlogging from right now. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the cosmetics—though if there’s a shade of pink in that line, I’ll start actually worrying about the #brand.
RD: By the looks of the many mini Lordes in attendance at that show, I'd say the brand is intact. Also alive and thriving: Lorde's dance moves. Or spasms. Or whatever you want to call them. Like everything else she does, these movements are hers and hers alone. They're not an homage or a throwback, they're pure expression and, somehow, they are cool as fuck. It's like she's turned the most jerky in-the-mirror embarrassments into an artform. For all of Lorde's Twitter-bred self-consciousness, she's also completely unafraid of living inside her own skin.