NEW YORK (AP) — Fans of the New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde have long commended the artist for her visceral pop craft. Her music, to certain ears, sounds like freedom. On her new album, it is as though Lorde is able to hear it, too.
On “Virgin,” the singer born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor’s fourth studio album and first in four years, pop hits are devoid of any anxious filtering. She is raw.
When Lorde first emerged as a gothic popstar — with “Royals,” and its critique of celebrity culture and hyper consumerism — she did so with prescience. Her sparse production style and cursive-singing had come from the future, and its influence would be felt for many years to follow. Her debut, 2013’s “Pure Heroine,” suggested that she possessed something her contemporaries did not; the synesthesia synth-pop “Melodrama” in 2017 all but confirmed her greatness.
She took a step back from all that for the sleepy sunshine of 2021’s “Solar Power,” and then took another — veering away from the spotlight all together. It seemed that this outsider dynamo had distanced herself from fame in an attempt to centralize artmaking once again. (Later, as it was revealed in a “Rolling Stone” cover story, she was mourning the longest romantic relationship of her life, making up the bulk of her twenties, and that she was overcoming an eating disorder and anxiety through MDMA and psilocybin therapy.) “Virgin” was born after that period of reflection.
Musically, “Virgin” threads the needle from “Melodrama” to the current moment. The lead single, the synthpop “What Was That,” is a reserved derivation of her previous work but no doubt a banger; on the syncopated rhythms of “Hammer,” she’s matured her racecar-fast pop. There’s a new malleability here. She sings, “Some days I’m a woman / Some days I’m a man.”
An album standout, the metamorphic “Shapeshifter,” possesses a tension between organic and electronic sounds that continue onto “Man of the Year,” with its bass and cello contributions from frequent collaborator Dev Hynes.
Credit is due to her new production partners Jim-E Stack (Bon Iver, Danielle Haim) and Daniel Nigro (Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan).
Thematically, Lorde’s never been more fluid and feral than on “Virgin,” in her descriptions of gender experience (“Favourite Daughter”) and sexual autonomy (“Current Affairs,” with lyrics that might scandalize fans not expecting messy eroticism. “You tasted my underwear,” she sings, partnered with a sample of the dancehall record “Morning Love” by Dexta Daps.)
For a singer who has always performed physical pop songs, “Virgin” is her most bodily work to date as well. Take, for example, the shortest song on the record, the vocoder-affected a cappella performance of “Clearblue” — a play on the popular pregnancy test brand, and not the only place where motherhood appears on the album. (Fertility is another theme; the album cover features an X-ray of Lorde’s pelvis while wearing jeans; in it, an intrauterine device is visible.)
This is a new Lorde — a more self-assured artist, warts and all — but one that recognizes and evolves her sonic signatures. Now, like in the early days of her career, “Virgin” is both avant-garde and pop radio ready, a confluence of unlike features that mirror its messaging. Only now, she sounds unshackled.
