Album review: Lorde triumphantly returns with second offering, Melodrama

Young New Zealand singer produces creative highlight of her career so far

Melodrama by Lorde. Courtesy Lava / Republic Records

Melodrama

Lorde

Republic

Four stars

For a nation of fewer than 5 million people, New Zealand is really acing the zeitgeist. In Hollywood, indie director Taika Waititi has been handed the reins of huge Marvel movie, Thor: Ragnarok. The hottest American comedy tour right now is by the wonderfully awkward Kiwi duo Flight of the Conchords (Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie). And in music, perched high on the indie-pop tree, Lorde now triumphantly returns. Kiwi quirkiness is a much sought-after commodity.

Auckland-born Lorde, real name Ella Yelich-O'Connor, soared beyond Australasia as a 16-year-old with her 2013 debut album, Pure Heroine, and found an immediate niche as a prodigious pop outsider, which heaped unfathomable pressure onto young shoulders.

As the title of her second album implies, Melodrama is not the work of a particularly happy, satisfied individual – socially, at least. But that interpersonal angst also drives one of 2017's most interesting records, as wild sonic variations map the fluctuating emotions of this enigmatic, 20-year-old mega-talent.

"I hear sounds in my mind, brand new sounds," she announces in anthemic opener Green Light, before threatening to stalk an old lover. It's a recurring lyrical theme.

Lorde insists this is not a break-up album, although on it she seems distanced from friends, lovers – practically everyone. The album’s concept, so starkly suggested by the cover painting, is loneliness. But this is an assertive, empowering alienation.

“They pull back, make other plans. I understand,” she sings on the piano-backed Liability, then predicts that “they’re all gonna watch me disappear into the sun”.

Those fair-weather friends probably will, because this release is the creative highlight of her career to date. Melodrama was largely written in New Zealand, the sort of quasi-remote location that invariably encourages experimentation.

There are recognisable musical references here, but Lorde and co-producer Jack Antonoff chop and sprinkle them across a great aural collage.

The Louvre, a tale of another "psychopathic crush", eventually evolves into Frank Ocean-inspired choppy electro, but begins with a strummed guitar: think Bryan Adams's Summer of '69.

Classic and modern sounds mingle like bewildered party guests. Drums from Phil Collins's In the Air Tonight crash-land on the otherwise intimate-but-industrial Hard Feelings/Loveless, then in the album's latter stages the singer becomes a sort of sinister Kate Bush, somewhere between ethereal and evil.

"I'll love you 'til my breathing stops," she warns on Writer in the Dark. "I love you 'til you call the cops."

Alienated she may be, but this fascinating record should win Lorde plenty of new followers.

* Si Hawkins