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Lola Young review – soulful Londoner finds magic in the messy
An endearing shambles between songs but a powerfully versatile and emotional singer during them, the TikTok star is cool but relatable all at once
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. 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.
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