Live Review

The massive hype in the wake of her debut single Video Games has led to Lana Del Rey being hailed as the new icon princess of sultry seductiveness. In her former self as Lizzy Grant (an album release quickly disappeared out of sight), she had been around for awhile but it was not until a name change and You Tube video that she started to ride the crest of the star-making PR machine wave. Thus when she appears on stage at her first London headline show to a full house, it is almost a let-down. No Lady GaGa extravagance; no Rihanna state of partial undress. The four giant white balloons that float around her - and onto which are projected a number of the aforementioned YouTube images are about as high and wild as it gets.

Dressed in white jeans and gold sparkly shirt, pouty-lipped and doe-eyed, she opens on Without You. But as she huskily and self-consciously shuffles through the ballad, high notes are frequently missed, almost confirming what her recent appearance on LaterWith Jools Holland indicated: the lady may be rather more of a beautiful object to be looked at and admired, than one who yet has true live show sustainability.

Performance-wise, Del Rey is at times faltering, uncertain. Even when adopting a vampish vocal stance, coming on to a lover to; let me f*** you hard in the pouring rain as she does in the forthcoming single Born To Die, vocal dipped low and inviting, one feels she is trying too hard to seduce without the natural confidence to maintain. There are, however, undeniably flashes of something special. Backed by a four-man group who provide the brushed drums and country-style guitar on Blue Jeans and the languidly sorrowful Video Games, audience pleasure levels are raised a notch. The latter, the emotive and bittersweet lyrical tale of love (its you, its you, its all for you/everything I do/I tell you all the time), is laced with swoonsome piano accompaniment over Del Reys own smouldering tones lay like glazed honey dew.. Radio, with its chorus refrain of now my life is sweet like cinnamon, and the rapped styled You Can Be The Boss (another familiar to fans via YouTube) are further greeted with cheers, whistles and applause.

With not a large stack of material at her disposal, the short eight-song, 40-minute set is closed with Off To The Races and followed by an apology from the chanteuse for the brevity. With her first album still to be unleashed, it remains to be seen whether Lana Del Rey will prove to be more than a one-hit YouTube wonder. Right now it appears that while there is plenty of sugary icing on top of the cake, a few vital ingredients may still be missing in the recipe.