I like imagining Lorde’s unique demeanour as embodying that of some classical oracle. Anyone who can make an album as fully formed as Pure Heroine at 16 clearly carries a wisdom beyond their years. So far beyond their years in fact, it once sparked conspiracies that she was a 40-year-old in disguise. The gravity and mystery she possesses is exactly why she commands a level of patience and devotion afforded to few artists. This kind of devotion is electrifying when you get an audience to scream every syllable to every verse, capable of elevating any concert into a one-of-a-kind experience.
Her latest album,Virgin, is one about spirituality in modern life, a theme that’s understandably difficult to untangle in a half-hour album. It’s about searching for life in the inanimate, and for the divine in the ordinary: worn-out jeans, a beaten-up water bottle, the rituals in daily routines. The fantastical in the most artificial of surroundings. Where mysticism might have once been a staple of everyday life, it’s now relegated to the background, to be sought out by those looking for purpose in their lives.
This perspective is the essence of the Ultrasound tour. The stage is rearranged with specific devices taking centre stage and Lorde, like a modern-day priestess or “spiritual technologist” (terms that notably adorn her merchandise) is dressed in a humble pair of grey jeans and a cotton tee. The stage production is surgical and laser sharp. The screens behind her display digital feeds moving with untrained, messy movements, focusing on her garbled motion, the sweat and wrinkles on her clothes. There’s an attempt to peer under the artist’s very skin in these unpolished visuals.
The evening began rather dryly. The two openers, Jim E-Stack and Nilüfer Yanya, weren’t concerned with entertaining the audience, more with carrying out a hostile occupation of the stage, determined to stay on as long as possible. In hindsight, a dull opener is good for making a great artist’s set seem all the more powerful.
Lorde proceeded to put on a concert I can only describe as rapturous. It starts with a blue laser shooting down from heaven, flickering and pulsating to the blare of ‘Hammer’ as Lorde appears from behind the curtain of light, a digital tabernacle. Her dancing looks less like choreography and more like possession. As the chorus approaches, she thrusts her arms to the sky before the beat drops, throwing the arena into a chaotic spectacle of lights and sounds.
‘Royals’, her biggest hit, carries the same electric energy. Bathed in golden hues, the visuals synced intricately with the percussion, transforming the empty stage into something that for the rest of the concert feels more like an extension of Lorde’s limbs and body than its own space. The momentum from here on in was relentless. There’s no duds, no wandering interludes, just a terrifyingly efficient escalation of energy. It was a ruthless barrage that solidified its status in my mind as the best concert of my life before the first act was finished.
Virgin being only about half an hour makes plenty of room for a selection of songs from across her discography. My favourites are the songs from previous albums she reframes within the context of the newest. Like ‘Oceanic Feeling’, now accompanied by visuals of oscilloscopes and spectrograms; ‘Big Star’ being performed by Lorde and her guitarist as they lie on the floor. Both examples reframe the happy-go-lucky, natural escapism of 2021’s Solar Power through a colder, mechanical lens.
The night culminates in the last two songs. For ‘David’, she dons a vest of LED panels, descending into the stalls to part the sea of devotees like a golden ikon. She reaches the B-stage to perform ‘Ribs’, a song still as emotionally prescient now as when she wrote it at 16. During the final notes, she breaks with the song and reminds the audience to search for “the magic” in everything. She reaches up to the solitary blue laser from the opening, snatching the beam in her palm just as it snaps off and leaves the room in darkness. When the house lights rise, she’s gone, leaving only the fittingly nostalgic joy of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘All My Friends’ on the PA. Like the rolling credits to an all-time movie.
Image Credits: Nicolas Sanchez Villena
