Concert Review: Lorde, Lo-Fang @ Sound Academy

By: Mehek Seyid (@whatthemehek) –

Lorde.

“I saw Niagara Falls”, Lorde commented at one point during her sold-out show at the Sound Academy in Toronto last night. It seemed like such a mundane activity for an artist who has become one of the biggest names in pop, selling over a million records worldwide, received critical and commercial acceptance, been seen with the likes of Taylor Swift and won two Grammys in under a year. It was one of the few moments of the evening when you remembered that behind all of the success and dark lipstick is a seventeen year old who is just beginning to explore the world herself.

It is easy to forget how new this entire experience is for Lorde because of how she has presented herself in the media and her musical output. Although her commentary largely draws from her personal context as a rising young star, she has managed to tap into a set of universal anxieties that transcend age and circumstances. It’s this consciousness, wrapped in a production mold that is different from a lot of mainstream pop offerings that has the world entranced with her.

Judging by her performance last night, she is more than ready to embrace the attention. She opened her seventy-minute-long set with her latest single, “Glory and Gore” against a black curtain dressed in an all white-ensemble, completely shrouded in a singular bright spotlight, forcing everyone’s eyes to land directly on her. It was difficult for anyone to look elsewhere, partially because of the three giant screens behind the curtain, which projected her performance, but mainly because of how Lorde physically merged herself with the sounds of her album Pure Heroine. If she was not flipping her curly signature locks as she paced from one end of the stage to the other, then she was certainly twisting, snapping and dropping her body to the kicks and rhythms of her music, movements that were especially exaggerated during performances of “Tennis Court” and “400 Lux”. It was such commitment that later required the attention of a chiropractor, according to Lorde’s Twitter, where she concluded that “apparently there is such a thing as too much claw hand.”

There was not one moment where the audience, which ranged from ten-year olds to their parents and then some, was not completely fascinated by the New Zealand-native’s show. Lorde was just as vocally engaging as she was physically, as it rose above the two-piece band and backing tracks, adding even more dimension to songs like “Buzzcut Season”, “Bravado”, and “Still Sane” than what they sound like on the record. With every performance, the audience took a step further into her kingdom, one which had interchanging periods of darkness and coloruful strobes, a place where she felt just as comfortable talking about her fears of her new-found success as she did experimenting with The Replacements “Swinging Party”.

It’s a place that her fans were clinging onto, their cellphones rarely leaving the air as they recorded every moment that they could, endlessly cheering and screaming their praises and adoration for Lorde. Perhaps that is because everyone knew that what they were experiencing was one of the last few intimate events for an artist who is on the precipice of a long, fulfilling, and successful career. Sometimes the glaring screens and endless chatter took away from what should have been a big celebration, especially during the dance-inducing “Team” and her breakout single “Royals”. The latter of the two started off with the line “Baby, I’ll rule” reverberating across the Sound Academy with crowns projected across the screens, a fantasy that fans greeted with the most enthusiasm. Even though she ended the night dressed in a gold cloak as she performed “A World Alone”, she should probably know that in the years to come, the ascent to the throne is not going to be so solitary. Everyone will call her Queen B.

Lo-Fang opened for Lorde, with his half hour set that largely drew from his debut album, Blue Film, including performances of “#88” and “Permutations”. It was interesting to watch Lo-Fang utilize his classical training in his performance, his violin work created a light but pleasant atmosphere that was well-received by the Toronto audience, who arrived early to grab a good spot to watch Lorde.