Last year, Lorde made a pilgrimage to Antarctica, eager, it seemed, to learn about the climate crisis firsthand. Her journey led many to believe that the 24-year-old’s highly anticipated third album would arrive in the form of a real life Sick Sad World. Instead, Lorde appears sun-kissed and enlightened on Solar Power, released Friday. “Come on and let the bliss begin,” she signals to listeners, a sentiment that sounds like it should come from a SoulCycle instructor or new age cult leader rather than a pop star, on the album’s title track. Four years after 2017’s Melodrama, she’s returned: No shoes, no shirt, no impending doom.
After the success of that previous album, Lorde returned home to Auckland, her own almost fictionally perfect oasis, and logged off, (“Can you reach me? No, you can’t” one lyric on Solar Power declares). The time spent away seems to have ushered her into a new era, one centered around the pursuit of eternal optimism. It’s a compelling transition, since she spent most of her adolescence soundtracking the blows of coming of age. On Solar Power, Lorde pauses to take a deep breath. Much of the tension that she’s built in her previous two albums finds release here. In a sigh of relief on “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” she sings, “Well, my hot blood’s been burnin’ for so many summers now, It’s time to cool it down, wherever that leads.”
Ultimately, it’s hard to say where exactly Solar Power goes. The album’s 12 tracks recount everything from fleeing Hollywood, like on the opening track, “The Path” in which Lorde confesses to “having nightmares from the camera flash” to winning Song of the Year at the 2014 Grammys before bidding farewell to classic rockstar fare: bottles, models, hotels, and jets. During the 43-plus minutes that make up Solar Power, Lorde toes the line between reveling in her past self and arriving at this new season of her life. “Now the cherry black lipstick’s gathering dust in a drawer / I don’t need her anymore / ‘cause I got this power,” she insists on “Oceanic Feeling,” referencing the dark pout that was long considered her signature look. On “The Man With the Axe,” Lorde criticizes her younger self, crooning, “I thought I was a genius, but now I’m twenty-two / And it’s startin’ to feel like all I know how to do is put on a suit and take it away.” It’s an honest admission about what celebrity has done to her psyche, but as a whole, the album plays like another cautionary tale about the pitfalls of fame and fortune.
Solar Power marks the first time Lorde has traded in the cinematic arrangements that made Pure Heroine (2013) and Melodrama so palatable, for a more stripped down, sometimes hypnotizing, seemingly drowsy version of herself. Produced with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, together they pull back a few too many layers, occasionally erasing Lorde’s signature bite from the equation. There are standout moments, like on “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)”, where a beautifully bizarre voiceover from Robyn, who plays the role of flight attendant, announces what’s in store when you reach your destination: sadness, equipped with yes, emotional baggage, that make you wonder what the track could have been had it not been dialed down. Lorde’s songwriting carries the album by combining revelation and wit to take us with her as she treks through self-discovery.
Four years spent unplugged (except, of course, for her secret Instagram account,) left Lorde with lots of time to interpret the world around her. On “Mood Ring” she pokes fun at wellness culture, “Ladies, begin your sun salutations / Transcendental in your meditations (Love and light) / You can burn sage, and I’ll cleanse the crystals” But, even if Lorde is in on the joke, when much of the rest of the album also reads like snippets from a Goop gift guide (with references to psychedelic garlands, and SPF 3000) it can be hard to tell where the joke ends. Regardless, her storytelling roots shine through on tracks like “Oceanic Feeling,” where she takes a dig at a past lover “I know a girl who knows another girl who knows the woman that you hurt / It’s strange to see you smoking marijuana / You used to do the most cocaine of anyone I’d ever met.” It is in moments like this, and on the quiet “Big Star,” with its lyrics like “I’ll still watch you run through the winter light / I used to love the party now I’m not alright / Hope the honey bees make it home tonight,” that Lorde really delivers her trademark bared emotion.
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