Hi, everyone. Virthony Gintano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Lorde album, Virgin.

Here we have a brand new record from New Zealand native pop phenom Lorde, her fourth full-length studio album since breaking into the mainstream over a decade ago, and a much-needed follow-up to 2021's Solar Power, a record that was widely criticized as her weakest yet, and really one of the strangest album cycles of the 2020 so far, because everything from the cover of this record to the sunny folk pop laid out in its tracklist had fans scratching their heads, and Lorde certainly wasn't helping the confusion by revealing that at least some of the content on this project was meant to be ironic or satirical on some level. Also, the crop of songs on this thing weren't nearly as strong as the material on its predecessor Melodrama.

In a way, though, it's not that surprising that Lorde would artistically end up in a place like this at some point because creatively, she refuses to pigeonhole herself, and she's just always been more cerebral than your average mainstream pop star, something that is clear in her writing and in her reputation, too. I mean, this is the exact point of tension on Charlie XCX's widely regarded single, "Girl So Confusing", a song written in reference to Lorde that she appeared on a remix of, where they worked out their differences and miscommunications as two very different female artists with a mutual respect for one another.

But yeah, a lot of the time I do think Lorde is operating on a level that many casual pop fans don't necessarily expect, even if her early work did set that moody, introspective alt pop standard that we're all more or less used to. With this new album, I think she is really trying to own that direction as she delivers one of her headiest releases yet. This is an album that, after multiple listens, there are aspects of it that I really enjoy. There are aspects that lead me wanting more. I wasn't crazy about a lot of the singles going into the album, but like I expected, they all come together into something that is slightly greater than the sum of its parts.

Because once you hear the entire album, you do really get a sense of the vision. But I say "sense" of the vision because even with having heard every track, what is getting at some of the time isn't always fully clear.

I mean, I'll say this. I do like the musical and sonic consistency across the record. Production-wise, this is really her most synthetic album yet. A lot of the beats on this thing owe a debt to EDM, indietronica, 2000's dance pop, a bit of trance, too. But as dance and groove-centric as many of the instrumentals on this record are, things never get aggressively loud to the point where these tracks would make sense in the context of a DJ set or something like that. Because generally, the music on this project is very muted, very low-key, very light. Even the dramatic peak that is built up to toward the end of the song "Man of the Year" is only relatively explosive with a couple of blaring synthesizers and explosive drum hits, because even as it's starting to fire on all cylinders, it's really Lorde's voice that is still the loudest thing in the mix.

This is for sure a very vocal-centric and lyrics-centric album. Take, for example, the high-speed memory montage flowing through the verses of "What Was That". There's also "Clearblue", which is this Bon Iver-esque vocal meditation with some very heavy chorus layers in the background.

Yeah, Virgin is most definitely not your average conventional assembly of pop anthems. It's not even as conventional as Melodrama, I would say, because the tracks on this thing read a lot more like a series of tear-stained diary entries written to Boiler Room sets and Y2K era pop music played at a very low and polite volume, which I think is the most accurate description I can give to the music on this album, generally.

I'm not necessarily against this direction and concept. The issue for me, though, is that many of these tracks feel underwritten or half baked. They end out of nowhere or feature lackluster progressions and builds. On top of it, the lyrics and topics and themes at the core of many of these songs aren't dug into all that deeply and are just a smattering of memories and reference points.

Now, I wouldn't say the lyrical content on this album is random. There's most definitely obvious linkages to everything that's being said on this record. Picking up on the persistent themes of love and maturing and womanhood and coming of age and heartbreak and sex isn't exactly difficult. There's also this very in your face juxtaposition of age and experience and rebirth and innocence. I mean, just look at the goddamn cover on this record. It's this pelvic X-ray, but the album is called Virgin, and there's an IUD in the picture in the X-ray.

So again, the consistent themes and easy to connect reference points are there. But I don't think Lorde does anything with all of these ideas other than just throw them all out there at the audience and expect for them to figure it out. Or maybe she wants all of the reference points to do all the work in terms of having meaning to them for the listener. Because no, we're not really exploring that deeply, this album's themes of fame, or I don't know, the "mama's trauma," or the cigarettes, or the love and this relationship that she seems so infatuated with losing and what exactly it meant outside of being this very scandalous, dumb thing to do that somebody who is younger and just maybe has less experience, less decision-making skills would dive into at first. Which, sure, those are pretty universal experiences for a lot of people, a rite of passage in some respects. But Lorde doesn't really have much to say about any of these things other than, I guess she experienced them, too.

I don't know. Personally, if I'm going to a record like this, I'm doing it in hopes that someone in Lorde's position is going to have more interesting things to say on these topics than the average person, or at least attach her feelings on these topics to more interesting choruses and instrumentals, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 6 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Lorde, Forever.