Lorde at Alexandra Palace, London, review: Artist performs her clever, danceable pop at a perfect live show
Supported by Khalid, one of the hottest names in music right now, the ‘Melodrama’ artist plays banger after banger for an exhilarating live set
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Your support makes all the difference.Ella Yelich-O’Connor surveys a mesmerised and euphoric crowd. “Alexandra Palace, you look f***ing sensational,” she hollers, a broad smile flashing across her face.
“I like playing in London cos I'm kind of awkward and you're kind of awkward… and we find it weird to express ourselves.”
As you watch her for the next two hours joyfully flailing and throwing herself across the stage you get what she means. For watching Lorde live is to uncover more of who she is: half self-aware performer, half jagged, unchoreographed effervescence.
It’s that dichotomy that makes her so interesting – her consciousness and the lack of it. Tonight sees her spin and weave her pop into clever, sleek and danceable shapes but there’s also the sense that she’s letting go. She can’t stop smiling. “This show is all feelings, all the time,” she exclaims at one point. She’s supported by perhaps the hottest name in music right now.
Lorde has called the teenage prodigy Khalid's “Young, Dumb and Broke” “f***ing gorgeous,” and, as that title implies, their music shares that rare knack of capturing what it’s like to be young as the world opens up in front of you. With his high kicks and crotch thrusts he already feels like a headliner. Live the intricate, breezy soul of his record is swapped for something bigger and more bombastic.
Songs like "Cold Blooded" has something of Frank Ocean in its DNA, yet playing it with a live band means that some of the track's nuances are lost under pounding drums and unnecessary 80s stadium guitar. But as he finishes with the scintillating one-two of “Location” (with the amazing lyric “I don’t want to fall in love off of subtweets”) and ”Young, Dumb and Broke” his star quality can’t be hidden and you remember as a 19-year-old with the world at his feet he has a lot of time to get his live show right.
It does,however, make the fact that Lorde, one year his senior, has perfected her own live show seem even more remarkable. Three costume changes, an interpretative dance troupe and a 10-minute soliloquy on fame, ageing and the journey she’s been on – it’s all here.
She talks about the fact that it’s the four-year anniversary of her debut album Pure Heroine – “it changed my life… you changed my life,” – and her new record Melodrama – “It’s a record about a wide open heart”. If this all sounds like an overly-long awards speech it’s all part of the drama and knowing-yet-dorky theatrics of the night.
It helps to view Melodrama through that lens – a diary of the New Zealand singer's path from teenage ennui to the tumult of early adulthood. And the music matches that: from clipped, sleek pop to the breathlessly anthemic.
Intoning irresistible hits like "Ribs" and "World Alone", she strides confidently across the stage, all hair and odd, erratic arm movements. At one point she tells the crowd “I'm going to try something” and begins to play the extended intro to "Buzzcut Season" on a xylophone. It can be too try-hard and artsy. A film plays during one costume change on which we hear Lorde ponder: “Don't you wish you could go inside a heart? The strings, the atrium…” The answer I’m pretty sure is no.
A cover of Phil Collins’ "In The Air Tonight" also feels a little leaden and out of place. But as the night draws to a close Lorde throws out banger after banger. After the last costume change we build from "Supercut" through a clipped and wonderful "Royals", into “Perfect Places” until she’s in the crowd for "Team". Then we’ve somehow arrived breathlessly at the end of the show, with Lorde literally lying down on the stage, taking a moment.
Then it’s "Green Light", the song of 2017, an exhilarating burst of bliss. There are glitter cannons, there are flashing lights (green, of course), there's the crowd: arms aloft, singing lyrics about telling yourself you can start your life once more.
Most of all there’s that palpable feeling of letting go again. David Bowie once described Lorde’s music as “like listening to tomorrow”. But now it feels less like Lorde is a detached observer from the future, more that she’s here, in the moment, and tonight we’re all living it out with her.
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