Lorde
All Together Now
★★★★★
Lorde has a surprise for All Together Now: her performance will be a radical remix of the Solar Power shows she played worldwide last year. “This is the Night Vision edition of the Solar Power tour,” she announces.
It’s a real treat for the festival – and a Sunday night knockout that underscores the New Zealand singer’s star power. She begins, offstage, triggering the opening beat to Royals, the 2013 number one she racked up as a 16-year-old. She emerges, finally, behind a vast gold disc that will turn dark as the sun goes down and segues into Solar Power, a valentine to the lazy joys of a sunny day that casts balmy rays over Curraghmore.
Lorde is one of a generation of artists who have redefined pop stardom. Her music is stunningly catchy but also orbits the idea of Lorde as a personality. Songs are carved from the textures of her life, making them accessible yet also powerfully diaristic.
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To that formula she brings an appetite for reinvention at All Together Now. Leaning into the moddish synthwave genre, she performs Flume’s stygian remix of Tennis Court and breaks down Mood Ring, from the Solar Power album, and puts it back together as epic techno.
The gig is personal, says Lorde, real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor. “It’s such a privilege to come back here,” she says. “My dad is Irish.”
The hits come at a ferocious clip as the concert enters its final stretch. She blends the baroque singalongs Team and Perfect Places and stretches out a beautifully blurred Buzzcut Season, emphasising its stygian nightclub beats.
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Lorde has a gift for lyrics that are simultaneously throwaway and steeped in before-her-time wisdom. The clearest example at Curraghmore is Ribs, a meditation on the horrors of growing old penned when she was a teenager.
With the black disc behind her flickering emerald, she finishes with Green Light – her yomping hit about being in your 20s and confused. It puts a bright, shining full stop on the performance of the weekend.
