Album: "Melodrama" by Lorde
Release Date: June 16
Label: Republic Records
Duration: 37 minutes
Grade: B
Nearly four years ago, Lorde released "Pure Heroine" — a raw and honest tribute to teenage years, a palliative treatment for youth who suffered from the restlessness of suburbia life. Now she has returned with "Melodrama," an album soaked to the bone with the pains of young adulthood. It is medicine for a lonely, cracked, drowning generation of new adults. Four years is an amount of time that can measure a great deal of change in a person’s life. Four years is how long it takes to get a a high school diploma or to earn a college degree, neither of which the pop-star did. Because four years is also the difference between 16 and 20, the respective ages Lorde was at the release of her two albums. And she communicates this evolution from teenager to adult brilliantly.
Where "Pure Heroine" was a contained storm cell of adolescence, "Melodrama" is an explosion of adult emotion. It documents the intense feelings so many people experience as they mature. For Lorde these feelings are accompanied — and often amplified — by alcohol, late nights and human contact.
"Melodrama" is characterized by the the kind of lyrical honesty that punches you in the stomach a little bit. Some of that brutal accuracy is buried in the burning pop feels of songs like “Green Light” and “Perfect Places,” which were released as singles before the album dropped. They mirror the way that a party can’t actually take away your deep-seeded feelings of isolation and sadness; rather, it gives the feelings a place to hide for a few hours. But Lorde isn’t afraid of the dark, and she addresses the flip-side of the party scene on more solemn tracks. “Sober II (Melodrama)” is the aftermath of the bacchanal; it is the time spent cleaning up after everyone leaves when you wonder if the night was really worth it. “Writer In the Dark” is simultaneously the most heartbreaking and healing track, best listened to alone (and perhaps lying on the floor).
The album is co-produced by Jack Antonoff who is also one of the masterminds behind Taylor Swift’s "1989" album and who has a solo career under the name Bleachers. Together, Lorde and Antonoff crafted Melodrama to be an older, more experienced relative of "Pure Heroine." Lorde’s vocals on the sophomore album are as unique and fresh in today’s music scene as they were four years ago. The sounds maintain a certain level of familiar electronic slickness but introduce new layers not yet heard in Lorde’s work, layers that mimic the complex emotions conveyed on the new album. If you let it, Lorde’s new music will cut you open and sew you back up.
"Pure Heroine" made you pause, analyze and think. Now "Melodrama" is here to make you melt, break and feel.