Hope you like her new direction! Whether it’s called Lasso, The Right One Will Stay, Classic or something different entirely, Lana’s new album is said to moving in a country direction. Even if support group London Grammar don’t exactly set the tone for that, Lana’s pre-show playlist does – hitting the crowd with historic pop/country crossover hits like Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” (1961), “Jackson” by Johnny Cash and June Carter (1967) and Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” (1975).
Actual husband
Much as she did at Stagecoach in the spring, Lana opens the show with a new song, “Husband Of Mine”. Point of difference for Cardiff: her actual husband – alligator tour guide Jeremy Dufrene – is in the house! “It’s a long way to travel,” she explains as she sniffles a bit after embracing him mid-song. “These are good tears!”
“Happy Birthday Lana!”
There weren’t a load of signs commemorating Lana’s 40th birthday last Saturday, but the one caught by the roving crowd camera does raise a endearingly massive cheer when it’s shown on the big screen.
Maybe the best of the new songs we’ve heard so far – certainly the catchiest – “57” gets a huge welcome from Lana’s Welsh fandom, who are hip enough to have pre-learned the words from Stagecoach footage on YouTube. Featuring her Spotify stats as a chorus “I’ve got 57.5 million listeners on Spotify…”. It’s genius, because it’s true.
“Young And Beautiful”
Great song anyway but improved by Lana’s concession to the traditional “pier into the crowd” stadium gig strategy. Followed by a Lady Diana Spencer-style train of gauzy dress fabric, she performs the song from beneath the kind of floral arch under which American couples get married in idyllic locations. Do we take this theatre? We do.
A full review will appear in the next Uncut, on sale July 18
