At Rogers Arena on Monday, September 30

In the end, the downbeat beauty of Lana Del Rey’s return to Vancouver was the way she was seemingly—exactly as advertised—fresh out of fucks forever.

That’s not to say that she didn’t care about her 7,000 or so hopelessly smitten fans, who gave her the kind of reception normally reserved for such rock stars as the Dali Lama, Barack Obama, and Jesus Christ when turning water into wine. As total love-ins go, this one was mutual. That was most obvious during the set-closing “Venice Bitch”, when Del Rey camped out by the barricade, posing with fans for selfies, signing album covers with Sharpies, and accepting flowers, envelopes, and wedding proposals from the faithful.

Fascinatingly, she looked genuinely happy doing it. Del Rey may have perfected the art of playing the most melancholy girl in the world when she’s in the studio, but live, she seemed anything but a saddo who’s had the life sucked out of her.

That wasn’t the only surprise on a night that served up the best moments of the singer’s gold-standard new album Norman Fucking Rockwell!, but not at the expense of the back-catalogue songs everyone showed up hoping to hear.

The evening kicked off with a projection of the words “Goddamn, man child/You fucked me so good that I almost said, ‘I love you’” being typed one at a time on a giant video screen. Draped with Christmas lights and dotted with fake palm and apple trees, chaise longues, and flower-adorned rope swings, said stage looked like something ripped from the pages of Home and Garden: The Retro Palm Springs Edition.

Appearing from the wings in a floor-length designer peasant dress and grey ankle boots, Del Rey launched into “Norman Fucking Rockwell” as two keyboardists, a guitarist, and a drummer delivered a note-perfect rendition of one of the greatest songs of the year.

And then it got a little weird, which is saying something considering the opener had her two backup dancers writhing around like they were in a Ballet B.C. reimagining of Flashdance.

Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s “Bartender” is a lovely tune, all champagne-at-midnight piano and too-heavenly-for-this-world vocals. What the number is not is a party starter, which made its placement one song into the night an odd choice. It didn’t help that, at the end of the song, the lights were dimmed for a brief period while stagehands disassembled and removed a piano from the stage.

That wasn’t the only time when things veered off into territory that might be best described as unconventional. For “White Mustang” Del Rey climbed a riser at the back of the stage and plopped herself down in what looked like an IKEA chair, where she sat for half the song. “Cherry” saw her lie on the stage for no discernible reason and gaze at the Rogers Arena ceiling, flanked by her two backup dancers. And a medley of hits that included “Change” and “Black Beauty” almost started with a major wipeout when Del Rey tripped over the base of the apple tree.

Not the well-oiled way a stadium show is supposed to run? Del Rey would likely be the first to tell you she has little interest in running a tightly scripted spectacle. If any of this shattered your expectations of a seamless spectacle, that was your problem, not hers. None of the almost-amateurish moments detracted from the low-key magic of the night one bit. If anything, it gave things a refreshing realness—a commodity that’s often hard to find once folks start headlining hockey rinks.

Del Rey has produced a crazy amount of killer songs since first surfacing in the mainstream almost a decade ago with “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans”. Both were among the numbers that kept the Rogers faithful swaying blissfully on their feet, both in the stands and on the general-admission floor.

If you knew the words—and most everyone did—singing along was encouraged. Del Rey was rewarded every time she pointed the mike at the crowd, most dramatically in “Born to Die”, most beautifully in “Venice Bitch”, and most awesomely in "Summertime Sadness", which had her complimenting the crowd with a "Fuck yeah". 

Ultimately, she came across as a real person, one who marvelled mid-set at the thousands of people who had shown up to see her, and one who made sure to gather up every gift she’d been passed—from the books to the letters—at the end of the night.

At no point did she seem more humbled than during the lead-in to “Venice Bitch”, when, beaming, she addressed the obvious chemistry between her and the audience with “This is the good stuff. Thank you so fucking much.”

There’s an argument to be made that such totally human moments shattered the illusion of what Lana Del Rey is—that she’s actually a fucking mess just like the rest of us, as opposed to the unflappably retro-cool badass we know from her records.

Conventional thinking is that she’d be loathe to pull back the curtain, especially when well on her way to becoming a 21st century icon. But the problem with conventional thinking is that it doesn’t work when you’re dealing with a somewhat unconventional artist. Not only that, but one who’s proudly made it clear she’s indeed fresh out of fucks forever.

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