Virgin＜限定盤/Bathwater Vinyl＞

Like the X-ray photograph of her pelvis and IUD on the album cover, on 2025s Virgin, Lorde burns through her persona, deconstructing each layer to get to the essential core. Its a dichotomous title for the 28-year-old New Zealand-born artist, who has been a star since emerging at 17 with the literate, preternatural swagger of her breakthrough hit "Royals," and whos been through several relationships since; the end of the last one purportedly served in part as a catalyst for the raw emotions she explores here. Yet its no mere breakup album, and dichotomies -- especially the bold contrasts between who she once was and who she has become -- are manifest throughout Virgin. Theres a feeling that having grown up in the public eye, Lorde is reclaiming her teenage self, a process that comes with both a dionysian desire for physical touch and an anarchic freedom of choice. Its also one that finds her remerging as a kind of adult tween, or "grown woman in a baby tee" as she knowingly declares on "GRWM." And while theres an exploratory abandon to her work here, she isnt carefree. Shes deep in her adult womans body, spinning on her hormones, as she sings in "Hammer": "My mercurys rising/Dont know if its love or if its ovulation." Thankfully, she has moved on from the beachy folk globalism of 2021s slack Solar Power, and Virgin pulsates with a percussive, sweaty, summer-in-the-city energy, as if shes just left the dance club and the night is still hot. Produced with Jim E-Stack who has worked on records by Bon Iver, HAIM, and Caroline Polachek, among others, Virgin is an album of blunt honesty and grooves. Its a two-fisted punch Lorde serves early on with "What Was That," a euphoric, sad/happy dance anthem about owning both the good and the bad from your past and moving forward. Its also the song that comes the closest to matching the defiant, rave euphoria of "Green Light" and 2017s Jack Antonoff-produced Melodrama. However, where that album was glassy and hypercolored, Virgin is diffuse and organic; dark woody bass lines bump up against fractured drums and humming air-conditioner-on-the-fritz keyboards. Songs like "Shapeshifter," "Favourite Daughter," and "Current Affairs" are also stylistically attenuated, balancing the post-punk pugilism of bands like the National with the operatic pathos of Kate Bush. Vocally, Lorde has never sounded more intimate and mutative, whispering overshared details of her daily life before soaring into the sun with a divas golden resonance. On Virgin, she is transcendentally witchy, harmonizing with herself both literally and spiritually, a pop star in the throes of creative rebirth. ~ Matt Collar