Lorde’s post-Covid return to Auckland a psychedelic tour-de-force

REVIEW: “Welcome, at long last, to the Solar Power Tour.”

After Covid-forced postponements, Lorde’s return to Auckland was a psychedelic tour-de-force of the star’s stellar catalogue in a moonlit Western Springs on Saturday night.

With Wellington native Riiki Reid kicking off the show at 5pm, the concert is a sort-of half festival, with food trucks and families lounging on picnic blankets planted across the venue’s field.

Indie darling Fazerdaze followed another hour later with an energetic performance, before Marlon Williams took the stage at 7.

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Williams, easily New Zealand’s most eligible bachelor, held the crowd in a mesmerised devotion as he swooned and swaggered through his 40-minute set, including hits from Make Way for Love and recent release My Boy.

Lorde, real name Ella Yelich O’Connor, last played her native Tāmaki Makaurau in 2017 after the release of her critically acclaimed sophomore album Melodrama.

Now, with her Solar Power tour, New Zealand’s hometown hero is back.

She takes the stage with Leader of a New Regime as the sun sets over Western Springs, the sky blue and pink, the perfect entrance for an artist whose Solar Power album is so entwined with the wonders of the natural world.

Sweeping through fan favourites Homemade Dynamite and Buzzcut Season, Lorde commands the stage with no shadow of the awkward and brooding teenage girl who first found fame.

“I’m so f…ing happy to finally be here with you, thank you so much for rolling with what has been a crazy couple of years,” she tells the crowd.

In between songs, she touches on the turbulent weeks Aucklanders have faced in the lead up to this Solar Power tour stop, inviting the crowd to let out their “pent-up summer frustration”.

As she sings her te reo Māori rendition of Stoned at the Nail Salon with Marlon Williams, you can’t help but feel that there is something poetic about the parallels of her stage to the night sky – as she performs against a colour-changing circle, an almost full moon shines above the crowd.

Concert-goers sing Lorde’s lyrics back to her, never letting up their excitement as voices grow hoarse and ragged from screaming at the top of their lungs.

Before performing Pure Heroine deep cut Ribs, her teenage lament on the aches of getting older, she lets the crowd in a little secret: “I’m still scared of growing up, but not the way I was when I was 15.”

“Shall we dance for our 15-year-old selves tonight?,” she playfully asks concert-goers, before Western Springs explodes with sound as angst turns to celebration, as the hurt of being a teenage girl turns to ecstatic freedom.

She was, as she sings, a “teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash”.

Those who fell in love with Lorde with her first album (this reviewer included) had a full-circle moment of their own tonight.

The hour and a half long performance sweeps through her already classic discography, from Supercut to Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen it All), to encore performances of early hits Royals and Team.

Aesthetically and musically, Lorde is one of the most exciting artists not only amongst New Zealand’s crop of talent, or of her generation, but in music history, meant to go down in history among legends such as Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush.

For someone who has been in the industry since she was 16, you wonder if perhaps the superstar isn’t even in her prime yet, of what musical gems she still has yet to give the world.

Her self-proclaimed “freak” status is what makes her so special, what sets her a part from her peers, what has made her music still so refreshing and evocative after all these years.

Concert-goers left Western Springs still under her spell, the Devonport girl with a mind of gold.