Lana Del Rey
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★★
Lana Del Rey walks on stage looking like a character from an old Hollywood movie or from an All-American fashion line going through a gloomy phase: Ralph Lauren with a splash of gothic.
“They told me this was the land of the fairies and good luck,” she declares late in a rapturous concert. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you enough notice.”
She refers to her decision to announce an Irish show just 10 days’ ahead of time. It’s Taylor Swift syndrome in reverse. Half of Ireland is in a flap over getting tickets to Swift’s Aviva residency next summer.
Meanwhile, Del Rey has slipped in practically under the radar with a guerrilla gig in the country’s largest indoor venue.
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Matt Cooper: I’m an only child. I’ve always been conscious of not having brothers or sisters
A Dublin scam: After more than 10 years in New York, nothing like this had ever happened to me
Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
Not that there is anything under-rehearsed about either Del Rey or the audience. An ecstatic performance doubles as full-throttle love-in. The crowd belts aloud the lyrics even to the B-sides (especially to the B-sides perhaps). Del Rey, doing her bit, soaks up the love in a state of humble elation.
The music never feels like an afterthought. Del Rey emerges dressed like a high-concept version of Linda Gray in Dallas or a grimdark Dolly Parton – an American icon with just a hint of decadence. Her dress glimmers with sequins. Her hair, to quote her hit Summertime Sadness, is “done up ... real big, beauty queen style”.
With the volume in the room already cranked up to “ear-splitting shriek”, she opens with A&W. It’s a brooding highlight from her latest album, Do You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? Produced by Taylor Swift regular Jack Antonoff, the tune grapples with themes that recur throughout her repertoire: wild, unhinged obsession and physical passion used to fill in the blanks where true love should be.
Del Rey specialises in stately ballads, which somehow never tip into hairdryer belters – she is, in the very best sense, the anti-Adele. But with much of the evening proceeding in a stately shuffle, she feels there is a requirement to liven up the set – to put on both a visual and musical spectacle.
To that end, she is flanked by a swirl of vocalists and backing dancers. Their task is to bring melodrama to music which is already gloriously baroque. They fan around her as she swoons on Pretty When You Cry, from arguably her best album, Ultraviolence.
Later, two of her ensemble waft back and on swings during Ride – a bonus cut from her debut LP Born To Die, which has grown into an anthem even as it circles such grim subjects as alcoholism and intergenerational trauma.
Del Rey comes to Ireland a fortnight after her late arrival at the Glastonbury festival led to the organisers pulling the plug with one song left. In Dublin, she’s just a few minutes later than advertised, the concert a gripping celebration of her decade as a cult mega-star and her intense relationship with her audience.
There is some banter – she talks about how moved she was by all the fans she has met in Ireland (she was in Temple Bar that morning giving out tickets to the show). She also plunges into the front row for a Princess Diana style ropewalk, posing for selfies and accepting bouquets (and then quietly chugs her vape as she returns to the stage).
The conclusion is glorious too. After the David Lynch fever-dream of Summertime Sadness, Del Rey brings out her breakthrough hit, Video Games, delivering the chorus from one of those swings. Higher and higher she soars. The crowd, singing along, soars higher yet, joining this melancholic cheerleader in her bruised rhapsody in red, white and blue.
