William Dart sidelines the lingering winter and soaks up Lorde's new Solar Power album.
A screengrab from Lorde's new single called 'Solar Power'. Photo: YouTube/Lorde
Lorde’s first album Pure Heroine was a phenomenal success, one of almost ambassadorial proportions. It pulled off a Grammy nomination as best pop vocal album and was taken very, very seriously in high-toned quarters. My favourite benediction came from Caroline Sullivan in The Guardian describing Lorde as the quintessential old soul in a young body, and praising the song 'Royals' for packing more finger-clicking disenchantment into three minutes than Lana del Ray managed to do in an entire album.
Lorde has always been quick to say that the words are the key to her songs. Nevertheless, her precociously detailed observations, subtly rhymed and paced, are inevitably illuminated by a vocal agility that makes her seem almost to dance atop the train of images. Usually against the crackle of beats.
As for a follow-up to Pure Heroine, Melodrama certainly brightened up the winter of 2017. There was, though, a change of pace here, with new and smoother production by Jack Antonoff. I remember back then singling out the song 'Liability' for this programme, and being totally ensnared by its acoustic sparseness as Lorde laid out her melody so artfully over one of pop’s most iconic chord sequences. And, four years on, I’m still hooked.
Annette Funicello beach movies were never quite like the video for Lorde’s Solar Power. To start with, the music is reaping the benefit of decades of South American bossa nova to loosen up its rhythmic bones. And forget any serious eco-messaging – the lithe and lissom Lorde is preaching the new hedonism whilst dancing on the sand, clad in a daffodill yellow, 2021 take on a Dorothy Lamour sarong. While pronouncing herself to be even prettier than Jesus.
There’s a lot about Ella Yelich-O’Connor in Lorde’s new album, perhaps too much for some tastes. The often sad trajectory that comes about when fame is thrust upon the young is a familiar one, fuelling some of my own favourite books and movies. For some reason, listening to Solar Power, Gavin Lambert’s 1963 novel Inside Daisy Clover has been burrowing into my skull and — subsequently — that lamentably underrated movie that Robert Mulligan made of it two years later.
While Daisy Clover’s short and not so sweet entanglement with fame was made choate and touching through Lambert’s writing and, on screen, by Natalie Wood’s terrific performance, Lorde, at 24 can speak for herself.
Interviews this year have made much of the singer cleansing herself of all the accoutrements of social media, closing off various accounts and even putting her cellphone on greyscale to avoid temptation. Indeed, the title song of the new album has her, at one point, throwing her cellular device into the water.
However, talking to the NME just last month, Lorde seemed far from having been a Trilby to a den of industry Svengalies. She describes her younger self as a tough bitch, doing exactly what she wanted to do and being kind of ruthless with it. In those boardrooms, it was Lorde that laid down the law.
Solar Power tracks the singer’s various disillusionments from song to song, often in throwaway lines or asides. All the while, never rupturing the perfect pop that’s being woven for easily seduced ears.
Music Details
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Bravado
ALBUM: The Love Club EP
COMPOSER: O'Connor, Little
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Royals
ALBUM: The Love Club EP
COMPOSER: O'Connor, Little
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: "Weird Al" Jankovic
TITLE: Foil
ALBUM: Mandatory Fun
COMPOSER: O'Connor, Little, Jankovic
LABEL: RCA
ARTIST: Bella Kalolo et al
TITLE: Royals
ALBUM: RNZ Live Recording
COMPOSER: O'Connor, Little
LABEL: RNZ
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Tennis Court
ALBUM: Pure Heroine
COMPOSER: O'Connor, Little
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Liability
ALBUM: Melodrama
COMPOSER: O'Connor
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Solar Power
ALBUM: Solar Power
COMPOSER: O'Connor
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Fallen Fruit
ALBUM: Solar Power
COMPOSER: O'Connor
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: Leader of a New Regime
ALBUM: Solar Power
COMPOSER: O'Connor
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Joni Mitchell
TITLE: California
ALBUM: Blue
COMPOSER: Mitchell
LABEL: Reprise
ARTIST: Lorde
TITLE: California
ALBUM: Solar Power
COMPOSER: O'Connor
LABEL: Universal
