“If you’re looking for a saviour, that’s not me,” Lorde sings, wide-eyed and solemn. She clutches her microphone to her chest like a bridal bouquet. A sharp-suited band stand behind her, fanned out like a veil. Conspiratorially, she cracks a grin.
The New Zealand pop star spends much of her strikingly theatrical two-hour show protesting that she’s not, in fact, “the leader of a new regime”. Edinburgh’s smitten audience doesn’t believe her. Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s fans have been fervent since her pithy, precocious debut, 2013’s Pure Heroine; 2017’s bruising, vivid Melodrama only deepened that devotion.
Last year’s Solar Power felt like a rebirth, exchanging shattering synths and late-night hedonism for sun salutations and softly strummed guitars. Radiant Laurel Canyon harmonies foreground lyrics concerning climate change and wellness practices instead of dancefloor dramas, but on stage these disparate albums find common ground in themes of escapism and utopia. Mood Ring, a beatific, sinister song about “trying to get well from the inside” brings new colour to 2017’s Sober, a dizzying, self-aware party track that seeks relief in “liquor-wet lime”.
Still, Lorde concedes that her diaristic songwriting feels like time-travel – “it can give you whiplash” – and sometimes the contrast is just too sharp. The elegant meander of closer Oceanic Feeling lacks direction when it follows the gut-punch euphoria of earlier single Green Light.
A stunning, sundial-shaped stage, with an outstretched ladder balanced between glowing orbs, works hard to restore balance. Lorde climbs out on a limb for Fallen Fruit, a gauzy eulogy that imagines humans departing the Earth with just a “pocketful of seed”, but sits in the crawlspace below for the crushing intimacy of Stoned at the Nail Salon, a first-person ballad about ageing and fame.
Solar Power’s eponymous, tongue-in-cheek lead single, in which Lorde dubs herself a “prettier Jesus”, was considered smugly unrelatable by some. But to see her convince a Scottish crowd of the universality of a long, hot summer spent in a “damp bikini” confirms that where Lorde leads, her flock will follow. With the room bathed in warm, healing light, she coos in delight: “What did I do to deserve you?”
