The subject of Lola Young’s single Messy – No 1 for four weeks this year – hates the apparent contradictions in her character, and punishes her by behaving unpredictably in kind. Judging by how furiously attentive Young’s fans are, as her biggest London show vaults from rawness to raucousness, that person is pretty much in a party of one.
And Young, 24, owns the chaos. After the Brit School graduate and her six-piece band open with the skeletally funky Good Books, she dissipates the energy by performing a poem apparently just written backstage, which refers to her between-song chat: “The talking parts are a fucking shambles.” Shambles or not, it’s endearing – and she has an obvious aptitude for using specificity and relatability to convey powerful emotions.
There’s the overwhelming, all-consuming nature of infatuation – to the point of embarrassment – on Crush, as furious drums turn to a whisper and reverberant guitars suddenly clean up, breaking the tension. You Noticed is one of her most moving pieces, recounting her surprise at a new lover’s attentiveness after being primed to expect disappointment.
Her perspective anchors her grimy south London soul, which incorporates hyperpop on Revolve Around You, here injected with fresh spoken-word energy; and punk on the high-energy Big Brown Eyes. Wish You Were Dead is turbulent and hard-charging. And in a set not short on surprises, Young turns the brazenly soulful What Is It About Me into a spotlit piano ballad for the encore, dialling down the instrumentation and upping the plea in her vocal delivery to a wail.
Naturally she closes with Messy, propelled to No 1 after more than seven months as a mainstay on TikTok. Everyone raises their phones into the air to catch a clip. Her powerful vocals – cocksure yet nonchalant, cool yet vulnerable – are among the most versatile of her generation’s, suggesting she’s far more than just a viral flash in the pan, and making a virtue of her adaptability.
Source: theguardian.com
