Pure Heroine [LP]

by Lorde

Overview

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. Lana Del Rey is a self-created starlet willing herself into stardom but Lorde fancies herself a poet, churning away at the darker recesses of her soul. Some of this may be due to age. Lorde, as any pre-release review or portrait helpfully illustrated, was only 16 when she wrote and recorded Pure Heroine with producer Joel Little, and an adolescent aggrievance and angst certainly underpin the songs here. Lorde favors a tragic romanticism, an all-or-nothing melodrama that Little accentuates with his alternately moody and insistent productions. Where Lana Del Rey favors a studiously detached irony, Lorde 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

Product Details

Release Date:	11/19/2013
Label:	Republic / Virgin Emi
UPC:	0602537539857
Rank:	1034

Tracks

1. Tennis Court
2. 400 Lux
3. Royals
4. Ribs
5. Buzzcut Season
6. Team
7. Glory and Gore
8. Still Sane
9. White Teeth Teens
10. A World Alone

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Lorde   Primary Artist,Vocals
Ella Yelich O'Connor   Vocals

Technical Credits

Paul Westerberg   Composer
Stuart Hawkes   Mastering
Joel Little   Mixing,Writer,Composer,Engineer,Producer,Instrumentation
Mario Hugo   Design,Illustrations
Ella Yelich O'Connor   Writer,Composer,Producer,Additional Production