Review: Lorde, Pure Heroine (Virgin/EMI)

If Lana Del Rey was the “gangsta Nancy Sinatra”, then 16-year-old Lorde is the hip-pop Diablo Cody: all Juno world-weary teen talk and, like, yeah-I’m-normal self-deprecation set to chilly James Blake beats.

When it works – as it does with crystalline perfection on the global hit “Royals” – it is a thing of beauty and wonder. When it doesn’t – about half the time here – it is as meh as the bet-no-one-thought-of-that-before pun in the album’s title.

Precocious, certainly, exhilarating, at times, Lorde’s debut album is almost but not quite as good as it thinks it is. “I’m kinda over getting told to throw my arms up in the air,” she sighs on the lovely “Team”, making Lorde a spokesperson of sorts for the “whatevs” generation.