The New Zealand teenager Ella Yelich-O’Connor has had quite a year. She wrote an uncontrollable phenomenon of a song called “Royals” that bum-rushed her home country’s charts before wandering off in search of new waters — currently, the song is brushing up against monoliths like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Robin Thicke on American charts. She reportedly wrote the lyrics to the song in half an hour and now, to place something solid at the center of her whipping storm of hype, she’s produced a 10-song album.

Despite all this noise, Pure Heroine feels unhurried, just like that breakout hit. The vibe is simple, assured, minimalist. Her voice is an instantly striking and likable instrument, ear-catching and conversational but odd, like someone assuming a difficult-to-place accent. It’s throaty and purring in places but mostly just undemonstrative, fitted sleekly to the demands of her songs. Her delivery is declarative and rhythmic, and her melodies offer a stripped-down version of the cellular hook-writing technique that, over the last half-dozen years, has rewritten pop music’s genetic code.

The songs themselves are funny and legible and shrewd, sketching out a sharp framework and shading it in expertly. If she weren’t a solo performer, she’d make… read more »