Retro Review: 'Solar Power' - Lorde (2021)
No one was expecting another Pure Heroine or Melodrama, but with all the creative freedom in the world, O’Connor made the greatest misstep of all: she made a boring album...
(Originally posted on Luna Paper in 2021)
Lorde’s latest album, Solar Power, is more mellow and less drama, to say the least…
Farewelling the messy, vengeful coming of age of her 2017 magnum opus, Melodrama, the Kiwi singer/songwriter has now reinvented herself as a beachy keen sun goddess or, to use her words, a ‘prettier Jesus.’
‘Her feet are bare at all times She’s sexy, playful, feral and free,’ she told fans in her recent newsletter. ‘She’s a modern girl in a deadstock bikini […] Her skin is glowing, her lovers many.’
At just 24, after two critically-acclaimed albums, Ella Yelich O’Connor is at an enviable point in her career where she can do anything and be anyone she wants to be. She’s forever transformed the pop landscape, her influence permeating through the charts even today. You can hear it in the youthful angst of Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘driver’s license,’ in the dark, electro-pop minimalism of Billie Eilish’s earlier tracks, and even in some of Taylor Swift’s oeuvre (cf. the sparse beat melody of ‘You Need to Calm Down’ with the behemoth ‘Royals’).
Not that O’Connor is interested in icon status. ‘Now if you’re looking for a saviour, well, that’s not me,’ she swoons on the sprawling first tracks, ‘The Path, ‘You need someone to take your pain for you?/Well, that’s not me.’
Much like Billie on Happier Than Ever, the singer spends a lot of time reflecting on her discomfort with fame and its inherent emptiness, longing to escape it.
She recalls the night of the 2016 MET Gala on ‘The Path’ (’Arm in a cast at the museum gala/Fork in my purse to take home to my mother/Supermodels all dancing 'round a pharaoh’s tomb), imagined like a fever dream. She pinpoints the moment things changed on the lo-fi, Lana-esque shimmer of ‘California’ when Carole King presented her with Song of the Year at the 2014 Grammys, before bidding goodbye to all the ‘bottles, all the models/Bye to the clouds in thе skies that all hold no rain,’ echoing the anti-consumerist sentiment of her most famous hit. On the sweeping, starry-eyed ‘The Man with the Axe,’ she cringes at the memory of ‘Dutifully fallin’ apart for the Princess of Norway.’
By the time we reach the psychedelic finale, ‘Oceanic Feeling,’ O’Connor has retired the goth cherry-black lipstick that so came to define her early on in her career, now ‘gathering dust in a drawer/I don’t need her anymore/’Cos I’ve got this power.’
O'Connor’s writing can be downright beautiful at times: You can see it in the ‘overripe peaches’ of her cheeks and in the ‘acid green, aquamarine’ of the water on the title track; in the sinister beauty of California with its ‘golden body’ and ‘cool hand around my neck.’
But such gems are overshadowed by bland production, a startling lack of self-awareness, and a rather fast and loose interpretation of satire.
O'Connor hews so closely to the wellness motifs she explores throughout Solar Power, that it’s hard to tell if she’s being serious or not. Psychedelic garlands, sun salutations, mood rings, sage and crystals… it’s very dated commentary and all so on the nose, when satire becomes all-out parody.
It’s hard to interrogate a culture and take the piss out of it when you’re so deeply entrenched in it.
As much as O’Connor scoffs at celebrity news, she’s still hanging out with It Girl Cazzie David and her family in their fancy pad. She rolls her eyes at the hundreds of gowns she’s amassed all the years, but wears a super-expensive yellow Collina Strada two-piece in the video for ‘Solar Power.’ She also calls out a famous ex on ‘Dominoes,’ how she heard through the grapevine ‘that you were doing yoga/With Uma Thurman’s mother/Just outside of Woodstock/Now you’re watering all the flowers/You planted with your new girlfriend/Outside on the rooftop.’ She’s jaded by fame and celebrity, as she brings up in almost every interview, and has just completed a week-long residency on The Late Late Show with The World’s Most Overgrown Theatre Kid Who’s Thrusting at my Vehicle.
Although she longs to escape fame, she hasn’t fully untethered herself from its trappings, either, which is strange coming from the girl who once mocked the beautiful people for their Cristal, Maybachs and tigers on a gold leash.
Just as eyeroll-inducing is the Robyn (yes, that Robyn) cameo on ‘Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen It All),’ completely wasted in the role of existential flight attendant and forced to say such lines as: ‘Your emotional baggage can be picked up at carousel number two/Please be careful so it doesn’t fall onto someone you love.’ And also, how do you not credit Robyn??
This line from ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon,’ too, is maddening: (‘Cause all the music you loved at sixteen you’ll grow out of’). It’s a strangely snobbish and superficial take, one I’ve never quite understood myself. Is still listening to emo and N.E.R.D and Incubus like I did back in high school and in my early 20s a true measure of maturity, or lack thereof? There are fans of O’Connor who are still bumping Pure Heroine just as they did when they were 16.
In the quest to appear older, cooler, more mature, O’Connor presents herself as a rather preachy and insufferable figure at times, like that one friend who’s suddenly made pot the basis of their whole identity after smoking one bowl, who thinks their ramblings while high are somehow deep and profound. No surprise that the singer considers this a ‘weed album.’
Such biting satire and sharp observation is also let down by unimaginative arrangements.
Solar Power attempts to look back on the sun-kissed indie pop of the 90s and early 2000s, which is kind of ironic since a lot of us older Millennials listened to this stuff when we were teenagers (and still do).
‘The Path’ uses a mix of Jewel and Natalie Imbruglia’s 'Torn’ as a blueprint. ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’ is a shameless cut and paste of Lana’s ‘Wild at Heart.’ ‘Leader of a New Regime’ is the obligatory climate change song that offers no real insight or solutions.
The title track is several songs rolled into one: Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded,’ Jack Johnson’s ‘Taylor,’ Len’s ‘Steal My Sunshine,’ All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores’ and George Michael’s ‘Freedom ‘90.’ ‘Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen It All),’ meanwhile, sounds exactly like ‘Solar Power,’ which is unbelievably lazy even by Jack Antonoff’s standards. ‘The Man with the Axe,’ however, has a sleepy, psychedelic feel that belongs on a much better album.
Made up of bohemian chords and a dreamy choir that includes the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, along with the occasional drum machine, the songs are pretty, wistful but ultimately dull the more they drag on, even for an album as lowkey and intimate as Solar Power.
The moody, sullen teenager of Pure Heroine and heartbreak queen of Melodrama was eventually going to grow up. O’Connor doesn’t owe it to us to be relatable, but having built so much of her brand on relatability and non-conformist beliefs, it can be quite jarring listening to Solar Power.
Like most people in their 20s, O’Connor thinks her existentialism is deep when it’s actually pretty shallow, insipid and really says nothing at all. The writing is not quite Matty Healy-levels of pretension (God for-fucking-bid), but it still manages to rub you the wrong way. There’s nothing worse than an album that tries to be too zeitgeisty.
And although O’Connor has hit back at critics who have accused her of making a ‘Jack Antonoff record,’ his influence throughout the album is undeniable, exhausting his grab-bag of tender acoustics and sprawling noir that have permeated through recent releases from Clairo, Taylor Swift, St. Vincent and Lana Del Rey. The word ‘meandering’ comes up a lot in reviews for Solar Power, and it couldn’t be more apt as O’Connor and Antonoff cycle through the same tones and melodies in the most lazy and uninspired way possible.
No one was expecting another Pure Heroine or Melodrama, but with all the creative freedom in the world, O’Connor made the greatest misstep of all: she made a boring album, one that will inevitably fade into the ether. Unfortunately, Solar Power is, to quote one of Antonoff’s collaborators, a summer bummer (No pun intended… much).