![]() ![]() Going off on a melodic tangent at the end of “Mustang,” she sheepishly apologized to the audience: “Sorry, I was just feeling myself for a minute.”Īs the night progressed, the Lana character faded more and more into the background. Even Del Rey seemed caught up in the moment. Magenta lights washed over the stage as the band came back on to play “Born To Die” and “White Mustang.” The crowd had already been yelling “WE LOVE YOU, LANA!” and screaming like they were at Shea Stadium, but they got especially loud for these songs. “It was actually a dragon, not a snake, but a snake sounded better,” she confided. It was an endearingly human moment, made all the more so when she confessed she lied about the snake tattoo. Talking about her friend and her song, she sounded kind of … bashful. ![]() It was almost like she was going back in time and showing us what she must have been like playing open mics before she made it. Del Rey wasn’t being the cool, collected pop star she was when she stepped onstage. She strapped on a white Flying V and said she was going to play “Yayo.” Then she dropped character.ĭel Rey started talking about the story behind “Yayo,” how it was dedicated to a friend from Jersey who got a huge snake tattoo on his back. It wouldn’t be the last time that Del Rey bucked concert conventions that night.Īfter ending “Cherry” with a brief quotation of “Scarborough Fair,” the rest of her band left the singer alone onstage. It was a neat bit of staging: I had never been to an arena show where the headliner did a whole song lying flat on their back. With the ocean projection playing underneath them, they looked like they were underwater. She sang as they sinuously waved their arms overhead. Melissa Fossum For “Pretty When You Cry,” Del Rey and her dancers laid on the floor. ![]() And the selfie-eager crowd were her paparazzi. From a distance, it also made her look even more like an old-school Hollywood vamp. The pale light they cast looked like an extra row of stage lights. Everyone in the front row had a phone trained on the artist for most of the night. They’re part of the experience, the aesthetic. Some musicians like Jack White have talked about banning cellphones at their shows, but it’s impossible to imagine a Del Rey show without them. At one point, it looked like a mosh pit for cameraphones. The crowd near the stage jostled and churned to get closer to her. It was the perfect walk-on, as Lana Del Rey’s whole being seems to be the answer to the question, “What if Laura Palmer were a Bond Girl?”ĭressed in black and flanked by two backup dancers, Del Rey opened with “13 Beaches.” Her voice filled the room as she prowled from one side of the stage to the other. She walked on to James Bond orchestral music with the familiar Bond gun barrel bouncing from side to side on screen. There was a certain nervous energy in the air: the hum of fans ready to boil over.Īnd when the lights went down and Del Rey came out, fans all around me shrieked like tea kettles. In particular, fans were swarming the standing-room-only ground floor and pressing up as close to the stage as possible. Though the venue wasn’t sold out, there was a large crowd assembled at Talking Stick. All it was missing were some Tikis and hula dancers. A projection screen overhead played a loop of waves crashing onto a sandy beach. Covered in fake rocks, palm trees, and pool chairs, the Talking Stick Resort Arena stage looked like an old exotica album cover brought to life. It's tougher to imagine that kind of character playing an arena rock show in 2018.Įven her stage setup looked beamed in from the past. You could picture her singing songs with Lee Hazlewood in 1967. A glamorous torch singer who always breaks bad, she seems to belong to a different era. Her five studio albums have served as one long fainting couch, giving her plenty of room to stretch out and get comfortable with her numb gangster’s moll persona. ![]() On record, she’s such a composed and stage-managed figure. Sometimes being an accomplice can be just as fun.Īs I waited for the lights to go down, I wondered what Del Rey’s live show would be like. It doesn’t matter if she’s swinging the gun or hiding it for someone else. It’s the electric charge that powers so many of her songs. I think of the scene where her future husband Henry hands her a bloody gun, moments after using it to pound a man's face in, and her wistful voice-over admits that it turned her on. Whenever I hear a Lana Del Rey song, I think of Karen Hill from Goodfellas. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |