Pure’s mix of woozy dream-pop, killer beats, intriguing vocals, and fanged lyrics about culture and millennial ennui signals the arrival of a new kind of star.
O’Connor’s coup d’état on Pure Heroine is ultimately the subversion of sentiment and expectations she achieves as Lorde: an often incongruous mix of the small-town study-hard goth-geek and a vampishm, leftfield pop star in the making.
Pure Heroine is a scattered, but preternaturally gifted album, charting the rise of a new teen phenom with enough awareness to navigate crossover success with aplomb.
To know so much, to feel so little and to embrace what is, she illuminates being young, gifted and bored with a luminescence that suggests life beyond Louis Vuitton.
Pure Heroine is by no stretch of the imagination a groundbreaking record. Yet it surpasses its peers not on its sonic pleasures, however alternatively insistent or recycled they may be, but on the singular force of its artist’s striking personality.
Writing her own tracks and with a deep thought provoking voice, this is not an album to be taken lightly…at all.
Lorde strikes a lovely balance between the world-weary, poetic cynicism of the outsider and youth's innocent optimism on her near-perfect debut.
The fact that a 16-year-old has such a passion and understanding of music makes everything in the world OK again. If you loved her singles, you'll fall in love with the rest of her work.
Overwhelming nostalgia defines Pure Heroine, a wistful dissection of a youth still in progress.
Taking its production cues largely from Jessie Ware's excellent Devotion, the nihilist pop of Pure Heroine makes a strong case for the less-is-more maxim. What's left is a remarkably unpretentious and almost raw set of vignettes mostly powered by Lorde's modest, affectation-free performances.
With lyrics steeped in critical thought and slathered with confidently modulated vocals, Lorde is the antithesis of pop schlock, making Pure Heroine a project well deserving of the commercial attention it's been receiving.
It’s not a perfect album: it’s very much front-loaded, with Royals, Tennis Court and Ribs all popping up in the first half of the record ... There is, however, so much talent on display that fears of Lorde being a flash in the pan can surely be discounted.
Lorde’s clearly a gifted songwriter for her age, but don’t let the novelty affect your perception of Pure Heroine. It’s a very grown-up album despite its teenage topics, and if you give a damn about good pop songs, then you owe it a listen.
While it’s no masterpiece, Pure Heroine is unique and engaging enough to keep the conversation going.
More fully realized than her debut EP The Love Club, Pure Heroine is a fluid collection of throbbing, moody, menacingly anesthetized pop that sometimes sounds like St. Vincent’s "Champagne Year" mixed into whatever’s in the punch at Abel Tesfaye’s house.
Pure Heroine remains a lush, engaging experience. Lorde’s sudden international success is most welcome in such an overcrowded, singles-oriented marketplace as we have today, and her songwriting alone may very well turn her into some sort of Leonard Cohen for the tween set.
Clocking in at just over 37 minutes, Pure Heroine is built for the ADHD-misdiagnosed masses, and its pop charm carries a sort of universal allure that cancels out the album's harsh bite.
Citing SBTRKT and Burial as influences, writing lines like, “I remember when your head caught flame” for the purpose of a rhyme and basing her best song around going down to the tennis court and talking it out, “like yeah.” It’s then that Lorde combines the frivolity of youth and the new science of FM pop 2.0 to unchallengeable affect.
There’s an honesty to Lorde’s youthfully cynical musings (very much the thoughts of a teenager, albeit a damn savvy one) that affords her more avenues to explore. And, whilst Lorde’s world creates its own incredibly distinctive atmosphere, it feels accessible and open to maturing.
If nothing else, the music is aggressively okay. But its overall unspecialness undercuts Pure Heroine's devotion to playing both sides of Lorde's "only 16" coin
Every track here follows the same pattern over identical lackadaisical rhythms, her vocals never rising beyond a low-slung murmur with most of the lyrics drawing the same conclusion: she’s bored.
Pure Heroine seems to hint at the truth...but the truth is, Lorde is a pop invention as much as LDR and is not nearly as honest about her intentions.
It's impressive, slick alienation for the Y? Generation, but as with Del Rey, it's a one-trick-pony sort of act.
She is more forthright about pop's failings: on Royals, one of several great moments on a decent album, she deftly punctures the inflated dreams of so many pop artists.
While Lorde's palette of influences is impeccable and her voice mature beyond her years, Pure Heroine is a somewhat trendy collection – neither classic-sounding enough to stand alone, nor innovative enough to break new ground.
Lorde casually dropped one of the most influential modern pop records at 16… What in the actual flying fuck was I doing at 16? Shit like this makes me question my youth lmao 😭
Yeah we all know this one and how good was when it was first released. “Pure Heroine” is one of the most important records, if not the most important of the early 2010s and nearly 10 years later, we can absolutely see why that might be the case.
Like I’m sure was the case with many others, ... read more
Pure Heroine is a modern classic. There's nothing like it, and it changed the state of pop music forever. While I could certainly live without "Still Sane," every other track on this LP is fantastic, creative, and invigorating.
1. Tennis Court - 7
2. 400 Lux - 8
3. Royals - 8
4. Ribs - 9
5. Buzzcut Season - 9
6. Team - 9
7. Glory and Gore - 7
8. Still Sane - 5
9. White Teeth Teens - 7
10. A World Alone - 7
Best track: “Buzzcut Season”
From "Tennis Court" to "Ribs," this debut LP from Lorde is filled with bangers. It kind of fell off a little closer to the end for me with "Still Sane" and "White Teeth Girls" (much prefer "The Love Club"), but she ended off on the amazing "A World Alone."
1 | Tennis Court 3:18 | 88 |
2 | 400 Lux 3:54 | 86 |
3 | Royals 3:10 | 86 |
4 | Ribs 4:18 | 94 |
5 | Buzzcut Season 4:06 | 90 |
6 | Team 3:13 | 91 |
7 | Glory and Gore 3:30 | 83 |
8 | Still Sane 3:08 | 77 |
9 | White Teeth Teens 3:36 | 82 |
10 | A World Alone 4:54 | 86 |
#1 | / | FasterLouder |
#3 | / | Idolator |
#3 | / | Slant |
#4 | / | Billboard |
#4 | / | Red Bull |
#5 | / | eMusic |
#6 | / | The Daily Beast |
#7 | / | Amazon |
#7 | / | Rolling Stone |
#9 | / | A.V. Club |