Albums and Abominations

By Benjamin Huber-Rodriguez     10/21/13 7:00pm

Lorde embodies the year 2013. Really, her music could have only existed now. Her young, female identity places her in a category with other teen pop stars like Taylor Swift and Adele. But her spacey, minimalist synth and bass production puts her in a category with other more electronic artists, like Lights or even The xx. At just 16, the young New Zealander could not have created the buzz she has without help from the ever-expanding Internet, which was nearly in full swing by the time she was born. The subject matter of her songs references modern music, cultures and obsession - things that are important to a 16-year-old in the year 2013. And by dismissing the types of acts she is supposed to be (Katy Perry, Britney Spears) and singing about what seems big and important to her, she outshines all of her compatriots on her first try with her elegant debut album Pure Heroine.

Lorde, whose given name is Ella Yelich-O'Connor, takes the role of a reflective, observant teenage girl. In her world, she does not hit up lavish clubs and watch the dance floor explode; rather, she rides the train to parties at her friend's house, subtly pregaming along the way. Not once does she fall in love on the record. No boy is so perfect, so amazing that she commits a piece of her debut LP to either shouting his name from the rooftops or trashing him for breaking her heart. Rather, she discusses meeting guys on the tennis courts to hook up and wonders why that is important to her, what it means to want to be popular, or to want to be wanted. 

Rather than taking massive swipes at our greater world like some prominent indie-rock groups, Lorde reflects on how the changing pop culture affects her small, naive piece of life - a step that shows great maturity. More amazing still is that the minimalist production stays true to the theme of the song. The chorus does not explode in a rush of synths, dub and massive backbeats. Rather, the only instrument aside from a clicking synth and some low bass notes is Lorde, and the fanning, spawning iterations of herself she uses as an echo, acting as the other girls she pleads to "Let me be your ruler / You can call me queen bee." Through it all, she still wants to be popular. In her own small world, she still wants to be on top.

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The production remains subtle throughout the rest of the tracks, adding slight touches in all the right places, such as the vibraphone on "Buzzcut Season" or the sad, sliding guitars on closer "A World Alone." When Lorde is not singing about the pressures of the modern world, she is able to paint heartbreakingly intimate scenes of her own life, which are not delivered in some loud, bombastic, shouting tour de force, but rather spoken shyly, the way these fears would creep up naturally. On "White Teeth Teens," she addresses the difficulty of appearing cool and of drinking to impress the crowd, but by the end, she acknowledges her own fakeness. These are the types of admissions high schoolers dare not make when appearances and confidence are everything - but music and art have a way of bringing out our darkest confessions. 

The title of the record is Pure Heroine. I like to think of this as a shot at all the female "role models" the youth have to look at these days (not to mention an incredibly tongue-in-cheek double entendre). Women who get arrested for drunken driving and drug usage, who stay in abusive relationships, who radically change their image for shock value, who sing about some new true love every two years: These are the role models we are so often faced with. And while Lorde is very young and still has much to learn, perhaps she represents a purity young girls really can achieve. She is honest, hard-working, true to her own style; calm and collected, but frightened at the same time. It is not an easy sell; her fame is a testament to the resonance of her words. And that's pretty heroic if you ask me. 

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