New Zealand pop star Lorde has always come off as an indie rocker who accidentally infiltrated and conquered the world of mainstream pop, but yesterday, fan-run Twitter account Lorde Daily uncovered some of the "Royals" singer's pre-fame indie rock roots.
Back in the long-lost days of 2012, Lorde performed with Auckland "future noir" band And They Were Masked, contributing vocals (under her real name Ella Yelich O'Connor) on two songs for an album called Characters, which you can listen to below. The band's influences include The Mars Volta, PJ Harvey, Fugazi, Battles, and Fela Kuti, so it's not exactly Pure Heroine.
The album's opening track "Sands of John," featuring Lorde on backing vocals, is a pretty moody and experimental tune, taking the Mars Volta's psychedelic production and mixing it with a more sinister Nick Cave attitude. The second track is "Piece of Mind," featuring Lorde on lead vocals in front of a ukulele-based backing track. While the music definitely sounds like a bunch of 16-year-olds embracing as many musical experiments as possible, for better or for worse, Lorde's vocals are pretty spot-on and are definitely the best thing about the songs.
You can stream the entire album over at And They Were Masked's Bandcamp page, or buy it for $10, which is pretty steep for a band with less than 200 Facebook likes, if you ask me. Maybe they jacked up the price after "Royals" hit number one. (NOTE: Their Facebook likes have gone up since I wrote that, no doubt because of all the attention they've received today.)
You can check out "Sands of John" and "Piece of Mind" right here:
