LIVE REVIEWS
When Lana Del Rey announced her first stadium headline tour last year, you would be forgiven for thinking it might not be a combination that would work. On paper, her music isn’t the most obvious fit for such cavernous venues, her material often too quiet, soft and beautiful to sound like it wouldn’t get lost trying to reach all corners. Nor does the nature of Del Rey’s output lend itself to a typical stadium production of pyrotechnics and high-octane choreography.
As she kicks off the tour in Cardiff tonight (June 23), though, Del Rey proves once again that she knows best. Throughout the set, she’s a compelling force in her own gentle way, and while there’s no actual fireworks, she brings plenty to the stage that feels just as attention-grabbing and exciting, and at times more innovative than her fellow stadium-filling peers.
The staging for this tour transforms Principality Stadium into a Southern idyll. The iron-wrought mansion of her festival run for the last two years is replaced by a modest house with a porch swing and white picket fence, a small pond out front and, down some steps and at the end of a small runway, a gently rippling moat strewn with white flowers. Trees and poles designed like lampposts flank the building, all becoming props for her dancers as they glide and twirl from rooftop to branches, porch swing to lamppost.
It’s the perfect setting for the new setlist she’s curated for this run – a country-leaning selection that would have showcased her 10th album, if its scheduled May release hadn’t been delayed. Del Rey vaguely acknowledges this after an early cover of Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’, telling the audience: “We’re basically running through the new album without the album.”
In reality, that means four new songs scattered among some of her most beloved work. ‘Stars Fell On Alabama’ provides an emotional opener, its lyrics refusing to let anything come between her and her “husband of mine”, leaving Del Rey in tears and briefly walking off stage to share a kiss with her partner, Jeremy Dufrene. “They’re good tears,” she assures us as she makes her way back to the middle of the stage. “It’s just actually funny to think about in front of so many people. This feels good to get that out of our system.”
‘57.5’, which got its live debut at Stagecoach earlier this year, already feels like a fan-favourite, the crowd already word perfect without an official release. But it’s ‘Quiet In The South’, which appears in the middle of a glorious run of older material, that’s the most striking. Soundtracked by swooping pedal steel and acoustic guitar, a miniature replica of the house Del Rey sits in front of is wheeled on stage, and her dancers open it up to marvel at tiny furniture.
Behind them, the singer asks, “Are you coming home tonight? / Should I turn off the light or burn down your house?”, foreshadowing her companions bringing out petrol bottles and dousing the stage, before lighting, projections and smoke make it appear as if the house – and its miniature – is ablaze, that Southern idyll of the early set crumbling in real time.
It’s part of a longing and a search for answers that pervades the whole show, save for a handful of tracks, ‘Stars Fell On Alabama’ among them. It’s there in ‘Ride’’s quest for peace and reprieve on the open road, in ‘…Ocean Blvd’’s wondering of “When’s it gonna be my turn?”, and in ‘Young And Beautiful’’s hope of still being perceived as worthy of love in decades to come. Before the latter, a hologram version of Del Rey and her dancers flickers in and out of view, adding to the feeling of searching and a life in disorder.
Earlier, a digital version of Del Rey appears in the upstairs window of the house, sitting cross-legged and looking out at the sea of people as versions of ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ and ‘Arcadia’ play over the PA. It’s undoubtedly inventive, but also ever-so-slightly disappointing not to get full, live renditions of two of Del Rey’s best songs.
She makes up for it later by adding a touch of spontaneity to the end of the show. “I’m just trying to think of one little thing that I could do that I didn’t plan,” she ponders before walking down to the front row of the crowd and conversing with one fan. “We were thinking maybe I’d do a little bit of ‘Salvatore’ a cappella,” she explains moments later, getting a reminder of the song’s lyrics through a crew member’s phone.
What follows perfectly sums up the Lana Del Rey stadium experience – she doesn’t need gimmicks and flash to conquer such enormous venues. All she needs is her exquisite voice and beautifully written songs, delivered with as much heart and emotion as she shares tonight. It might not have seemed obvious at first, but once you’ve witnessed it, Del Rey the stadium headliner feels like a very natural fit after all.
‘Stars Fell On Alabama’
‘Henry, Come On’
‘Stand By Your Man’
‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’
‘Ultraviolence’
‘Ride’
‘Video Games’
‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’
‘Arcadia’
‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’
‘Quiet In The South’
‘Young And Beautiful’
‘Summertime Sadness’
‘Born To Die’
’57.5’
‘Salvatore’
‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’
LIVE REVIEWS
Arriving at The O2 for the first night of Radiohead’s London residency, we walk in under Stanley Donwood artwork lining the walkway and the lines of the band’s bleak modern chant “Fitter Happier” printed on a huge banner hanging from the ceiling of the former Millennium Dome. The moment instantly brings back memories of walking into Oasis’ Live “25” tour earlier this summer. This is the other major rock return of the year and the atmosphere carries a different kind of excitement, yet the intensity feels just as real. Instead of bucket hats and throwing drinks into warm air, we have cold weather and a slow shuffle through the night to gather in the dark. Toniiiiiight, I’m a pig in a cage on antibiotics.
It almost feels unreal that nine full years have passed since Radiohead’s last album, the rich and sorrowful “A Moon Shaped Pool”, and that they have not toured since 2017. In between, we have seen several side-projects, including Ed O’Brien’s overlooked but inspired solo run as EOB and the way Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood nearly recreated Radiohead’s spirit under a different name through the sharp jazz-rock of The Smile, as well as a wave of controversy.
After performing in Tel Aviv in 2017, questions grew louder about the band’s connection to Israel as the horrors of the genocide in Gaza intensified. Attention landed on Greenwood’s collaboration with Dudu Tassa, an Israeli musician who has played for the IDF, and on Yorke’s later comments responding to criticism. The guitarist had joined anti-government protests in Israel, where his wife is from, and the band recently made their views clear again by speaking out against Netanyahu’s regime, insisting that music should be something that unites people from every culture. That idea guides the show tonight, where there is no sign of protest or boycott.
The audience surrounds the stage, which sits in the center to create a more personal and absorbing feeling than most massive arena shows ever manage. A flickering vocoder opens the room and builds tension before the band walk out and jump straight into old-school territory with the raw guitar gloom of “The Bends” opener “Planet Telex”. It is one of many choices designed to thrill the crowd from a group not always associated with this kind of approach, and the packed venue screams back “everything is broken. why can’t you forget?” as a shared release against everything falling apart in the world around us.
With a “busking approach” guiding the tour, the band rehearsed more than 70 songs and have performed around 43 so far, so this is not the predictable hit conveyor belt of Oasis’ shows. It feels refreshing to never know what is coming next. The setlist leans heavily on the treasures from “OK Computer” and “In Rainbows” and gives equal space to the once-dismissed but now appreciated “Hail To The Thief”. It creates a kind of Radiohead-style hit parade, without “Creep” of course, and includes the occasional glammed-up oddity to let the show breathe.
There is the roaring political fear of “2+2=5”, the huge and aching sweep of “Lucky”, the pulsing electronic rush of “15 Step” and the joyful sing-along of “No Surprises” anchoring the early part of the performance. This section also includes “Sit Down. Stand Up.” with a new soft happy hardcore ending, “Bloom” from the fragile “The King Of Limbs” that now carries a brighter neon energy, and “The Gloaming” flowing into “Kid A”, giving the night a moment to sink before everything intensifies again.
There is not a single chance for a toilet break from that moment onward. From the gentle pain of “Videotape”, to the wild three-part surge of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” into “Idioteque” and “Everything In Its Right Place”, to the guitar-driven “In Rainbows” songs and the massive first-act finale of “There There”, every moment lands exactly how a Radiohead fan would hope. The visuals also look spectacular.
Then we reach the reward of a seven-song encore that reads like fantasy on paper, complete with the newly viral “Let Down”, a playful return to “a song we wrote on a freezing cold farm in 1994” with the indie powerhouse “Just”, and the huge final blow of “Karma Police”. This show becomes the cinematic and artistic contrast to Oasis’ carefree chaos, capturing that feeling of “standing on the edge” and letting everything wash over you. The entire night carries a fierce energy and a well-judged sense of scale, offered with warmth and intention, and Yorke leans fully into his rockstar presence as the band rotate around the stage to engage each part of the arena. For a group that once cringed at the idea of “arena rock”, no one performs it better. A new album and another night like this would be welcome as soon as possible.
‘Planet Telex’
‘2 + 2 = 5’
‘Sit Down. Stand Up.’
‘Lucky’
‘Bloom’
‘15 Step’
‘The Gloaming’
‘Kid A’
‘No Surprises’
‘Videotape’
‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’
‘Idioteque’
‘Everything In Its Right Place’
‘The National Anthem’
‘Daydreaming’
‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’
‘Bodysnatchers’
‘There There’
‘Fake Plastic Trees’
‘Let Down’
‘Paranoid Android’
‘You and Whose Army?’
‘A Wolf at the Door’
‘Just’
‘Karma Police’
