Lorde - Virgin

There’s something telling about Lorde’s state of mind on ‘Hammer’, which breaks open the world of ‘Virgin’. “I might have been born again / I’m ready to feel like I don’t have thе answers,” she sings between industrial slices of icy synths. Always presented as wise beyond her years, it doesn’t feel like Ella Yelich-O’Connor ever had the opportunity to mine the arrogance of youth and naivety, despite being just 17 when her debut was unleashed. Across her fourth LP, though, O’Connor drills deep into that somewhat untapped well.

Predecessor ‘Solar Power’ was a whisker away from a mis-step. It had its moments, but the sunbleached recordings didn’t hold that Lorde DNA when you shook the songs upside down. The sun-soaked hippy that skipped through this era felt more like cosplay - an unusual feeling for somebody usually so distinctively herself. The rousing Charli xcx ‘Girl, so confusing’ remix that surfaced at the height of last year’s brat summer proved she still had the chops, taking down music’s treatment of female artists in one fell 40-second swoop. “It’s you and me on the coin the industry loves to spend,” she asserted, imploding the illusions herself and Charli had been lured into themselves. This famed exchange seems to have recalibrated Lorde’s confidence, pumping gas back into the creative tank.

The songs of ‘Virgin’ strike on first listen. There aren’t any layers to peel back here; the arrangements are raw and stark. Searching for the sound she needed to accompany the unabashed lyrical material, for Lorde, multi-million dollar recording studios just didn’t cut it - instead, a grubby backroom with producer Jim-E Stack held the sonic bounty. It’s apparent in the chugging strings of ‘Shapeshifter’, which sounds like the stems of a symphony set to a Burial beat, and the auto-tuned a cappella of ‘Clearblue’ (“After the ecstasy / Testing for pregnancy / Praying in MP3”).

The lyrics paint vivid scenes with inexpensive language, their scattershot logic often snagging unfiltered mundane moments and fleeting thoughts as she places gender dynamics under the microscope. From the “Swish mouthwash / Jerk off” freedom of ‘Man Of The Year’ to the desire to be a “grown woman in a baby tee” on ‘GRWM’, this ping-ponging charges the album - as does sexuality. The Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape is referenced on ‘Current Affairs’: “On the boat it was pure and true / Then the film came out,” she sings, her voice mourning the loss of something innocent as a chopped-up sample rings out. It’s a glorious tapestry of reference points to wade through.

And, just as she first sets out on ‘Hammer’, no answers are provided here. ‘Virgin’ gravitates around a sequence of moments rendered through striking melodies and exhilarating production that sweep you from sparse soundscapes to the sweatbox and back. It’s a reset that’s provided an almighty haul of tunes. You half wonder whether lines such as “Since I was 17, I gave you everything / Now we wake from a dream” are posed to a lover, or to a fan. The songs here are destined to linger on Lorde’s setlists for a long time, from the triumphant ‘If She Could See Me Now’ through to the addictive, restless groove of ‘Favourite Daughter’. A thrilling comeback that puts Lorde’s trajectory to the stars back on track.