Like millions of others, I fell head over heels for Video Games when I heard it in August. It was a tweet by Rosie Swash from the Guardian along the lines of ‘Oh My God this is great’ and the ensuing Alexis Petridis ‘yes it is’ banter with the link to the video. Over 6 million views later there’s no doubt Lana is special… there seemed to be a home made feeling to the whole package with Lana looking , well, pretty damn gorgeous: it felt like a genuine ‘out of nowhere’ appearance.
Of course, it’s never that honest, and , it turned out Lana’s been kicking around for a while as Lizzie Grant, and if all’s to be believed, she changed direction around her management and stylized ‘Lana Del Ray’
The Jools Holland appearance was encouraging … sparse and gorgeous, so I was expecting great things from the gig last night. Lovely venue and very intimate: 3 or 4oo capacity I’d say?
Really lovely 4ft wide balloons were hung around the venue, and 50s and 60s Americana Super 8 film clips were projected onto them.. ace touch.
So, when Lana came on I was instantly disappointed by the band: properly American polished muso band: for those of you who’ve seen This Is It the Jacko film of his rehearsals, the band are of that standard. This was a bad thing. They sounded like a CD backing track: polite and tasteful and the keyboard dude insisted on using a vile string pad on every flipping song.
I was totally expecting a cool looking and a little rough sounding band with beat up Rhodes, Fenders and Gretch’s. What we got was a function band. Hmm. Didn’t add up.
Anyway: tunes: yep, some beauties and some funkies. Most with some pretty sexy lyrics. She sang ‘Fuck’ or ‘Fucking’ quite a bit.
Between song banter revealed a giggly girl…. I was hoping for some mystery: a moody sultry ‘thankyou’. I guess there’s no such thing as mystery anymore….
It could go either way, but it seems mass market appeal seems to be the goal with Adele’s PR company, an Interscope deal, and a Guy Chambers single forthcoming, Lana isn’t quite as ‘real’ as I’d hoped.
Watch this space.
Yes, she is rather tasty.
armyourears.com 