STACK #202 Aug 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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Images by Ophelia Mikkelson Jones

LORDE OF LIGHT

T he cover of the third album from dream- pop mastermind and “prettier Jesus“ Lorde is the first clue that the New Zealander is stepping cheekily away from the moody chiaroscuro-amongs-the-bed-linen aesthetic of her last album, 2017‘s critically acclaimed Melodrama . While Melodrama presented a philosophy of excess in comparison to Lorde‘s Joel Little-produced debut of 2013, Pure Heroine (which spawned the track that started it all, the astonishingly precocious – she was 16 when it was recorded! – Royals ), it was the beginning

It‘s a new era of Our Lorde – AKA Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O‘Connor – and with Solar Power , the musician leaps from the metaphorical dusk to the literal sunshine. Words Zoë Radas

of a partnership which would gild the road ahead; in Jack Antonoff, Yelich-O‘Connor found a musical muse who had the capacity to send her own visionary powers into overdrive. Melodrama was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, won the New Zealand Music Award for Album of the Year, and elbowed its way onto year-end lists by critics of all proclivities. In an Instagram story of June 2019 – two years to the day after Melodrama ‘s release – Lorde told her fans: “I was such a baby making that work, lots of emotions and learning so

14 AUGUST 2021

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