Laufey
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★☆
Back in the 1950s, before Elvis and The Beatles ruined the fun, teenagers would go weak at the knees for the jazzy stylings of Frank Sinatra and other snappily attired crooners.
That long-lost era when a velvet voice mattered more than a catchy chorus or an ostentatious guitar solo is conjured anew by Laufey, the Gen Z sensation whose brilliantly retro pop sits somewhere between a music club with lampshades on the tables and your 16-year-old’s TikTok feed.
The Icelandic-Chinese singer brings her old-school sound thrillingly up to date at her biggest Dublin show so far – backed by her own hype man in the form of a giant white rabbit named Mei Mei. Her funny bunny first appears waving from a trapdoor high above the room just before Laufey – pronounced Lay-vay – takes to the stage and then pops up again to crown the best-dressed attendee of the night.
Old fashioned and slow-paced, Laufey’s music should not really work in a world dominated by Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.. More than once on Friday night she describes her aspiration to be a star as an impossible dream that has somehow come to pass.
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But through sheer hard work and dazzling talent – she was soloing for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at the age of 15 – Laufey has become something nobody in the music industry could have predicted: a two-time Grammy winner and playlist favourite who owes more to Chet Baker than to Beyoncé and whose debt to Billie Holiday soars above her occasional foray into Taylor Swift-style high-school confessional.
She has charisma in abundance as she materialises in the midst of an ornate set that looks like something from a big choreography number in a silent movie. Backed by sweeping balustrades and dancers who pirouette like melancholic marionettes, she opens with Clockwork, which showcases both her rich and expressive voice and the moves she has had to fine-tune since graduating from clubs to arenas.
Mindful of audiences’ ever-shortening attention spans, the performance is divided into four easily digestible acts. After the old Hollywood glam of the opening segment, part two features Laufey on a secondary stage re-creating the intimate ambience of a jazz club before she leans into arty goth-pop on the menacing power ballad Carousel.
There is no repeat of the guest appearance by the actor Jeff Goldblum, a fellow jazz musician, in Manchester earlier in the week. But she compensates by listing everything she loves about Ireland – Kerrygold, a well-known brand of dark beer, etc – then “splits the G” by glugging from a pint.
With her fantastic voice and old-timey aura, it is surprising to learn that Laufey grew up beset by insecurity. She puts these front and centre of her final suite of songs, including the Olivia Rodrigo-esque Castle in Hollywood and Sabotage, where she throws herself on the floor as distorted guitars kick in like the grumpy bit in the Radiohead song Creep.
An evening of jazz-tinged joy and gorgeous melancholy closes with her tenderest song, Letter to My 13-Year-Old Self, where she addresses the shy teenager in her bedroom in Reykjavík who did not dare believe she could be a star. But that’s what she has become, and at 3Arena she has a screaming fan base and the giant roving rabbit to prove it.
