Despite the fact that she’s dropped an album each 4 years, Lorde’s profession has felt so start-stop that it’s stunning to appreciate we’ve had a dozen journeys across the solar since “Royals” lofted her, on the age of simply 16, to Grammy-winning, international stardom in a matter of months. She drops an album, excursions, after which principally hides in plain sight till she’s able to do it once more. That’s not a criticism — props to her for dealing with fame so totally on her personal phrases, regardless of the anxieties she’s spoken of in her musical collaboration/ remedy session with Charli xcx on “Lady, So Complicated,” and the strong publicity and social-media marketing campaign main as much as this newest, a lot louder chapter in her profession.

Whereas her voice and melodies are all the time unmistakably her, every of these chapters has been dramatically totally different from the one earlier than, and this one isn’t any exception. Her final album, the ethereal “Photo voltaic Energy,” was so hushed and quietly recorded that you simply needed to pressure to listen to a lot of it, even the songs that characteristic the heavenly-voiced trio of Lorde, Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo (a type of alternative-universe Boygenius).

This one is about being greater, bolder, noisier, and far more snug in her personal pores and skin. Gone are the acoustic guitars and smallness of “Photo voltaic Energy,” which was written in pandemic seclusion within the countryside of her native New Zealand. This can be a New York and London album: It’s loud, with quick beats, bizarre noises, lush keyboard textures and a busy-ness that her music hasn’t had in a very long time.

And lyrically, it’s as revealing because the x-ray of her pelvis on the album’s cowl. There are heavy feelings in each tune, which she’s stated stem partially from a breakup, an consuming dysfunction and common anxiousness and self-loathing; there are references to punching mirrors, stage fright, ego demise, obsessing over physique weight, even bodily capabilities. The themes would possibly verge into oversharing for some, but it surely’s all the time been part of her persona, and the upshot is about confronting, accepting and/or resolving one’s personal messiness and beginning over (therefore the title).

No mistake it begins with a tune referred to as “Hammer”: “There’s a warmth within the pavement, my mercury’s racin’/ Don’t know if it’s love or if it’s ovulation/ Whenever you’re holding a hammer, the whole lot seems to be like a nail.” The final line earlier than the refrain is “Some days I’m a lady, some days I’m a person” — and that’s all within the album’s first minute.

Musically, she’s swapped Jack Antonoff, her major collaborator on the earlier two albums, for Bon Iver/ Kacy Hill veteran Jim E. Stack, whose electronics-dominated music right here matches the lyrics completely, rising and receding with the feelings, pulling again or piling on for impression. On “Shapeshifter,” probably essentially the most highly effective tune on the album, the lyrics make their level — “I’ve been up on a pedestal/ However tonight I simply wanna fall” — however for the ultimate minute her overdubbed vocals repeat these phrases because the music builds in velocity and velocity, climaxing with a wonderful wash of racing beats, celestial electronics and a string association from Rob Moose.

Conversely, the temporary “Clearblue” is simply her vocals, certainly one of them autotuned to automaton-ness; “Damaged Glass” includes a backing vocal that sounds a lot like Robyn we have been poring over the credit for her identify (Lorde is the one credited vocalist). There are occasional sonic similarities with Bon Iver’s newest, “Sable, Fable” — which isn’t stunning, since Stack labored on each albums in the identical interval — however they by no means sound alike.  

Clearly, “Virgin” could be very autobiographical and a little bit of an elaborate self-cleanse, but it surely’s additionally the sound of an individual within the second half of their twenties discovering knowledge and themselves. And judging by how usually previously few years she’s been cited as a serious affect by younger feminine artists, it is going to be attention-grabbing to see how far this album reaches.