The subject of Lola Young’s single Messy – No 1 for four weeks this year – hates the apparent contradictions in her character, and punishes her by behaving unpredictably in kind. Judging by how furiously attentive Young’s fans are, as her biggest London show vaults from rawness to raucousness, that person is pretty much in a party of one.
And Young, 24, owns the chaos. 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.
