Live Review: Lorde, Safia - Riverstage

Safia provide a high-energy introduction to the evening in front of an absolutely packed Riverstage. Their tracks range across the electro-indie-pop spectrum and incorporate calypso, EDM and R&B at various points.

Frontman Ben Woolner bounces across the stage and shows off an impressive falsetto (even when not covering James Vincent McMorrow). There’s not enough in the songs yet to make them stand out from the crowd of similar acts, but the band is tight and enthusiastic and the audience seems genuinely appreciative – dancing and cheering in all the right places.

A very small figure on a very large stage, Lorde strides out alone to perform opener, Glory And Gore. The set design is simple: draped black curtains with strong white spotlights illuminating the singer who, also dressed in a mix of black and white, presents a striking monochromatic image. In those spotlights, Lorde twists and dances in sharp jerks, her body twitching to the music; a captivating presence and a long distance from the structured choreography of more traditional pop artists.

Lorde twists and dances in sharp jerks, her body twitching to the music.

Lorde’s album, Pure Heroine, has a distinct outsider element, combining a deft pop sensibility with a cold minimalism that’s easier to imagine working in a small venue than an outdoor arena. To make the songs fit the space, they’ve been expanded and filled-in, but while the minimalism is reduced it certainly hasn’t made the songs more immediately accessible. Instead the harsher aspects have been amplified: heavy bass lines are emphasised, distortion added to the instrumentation, but it’s held together and given warmth by the singer’s impressive voice. In this almost industrial-pop context, a brief cover of Kanye West’s Hold My Liquor tied to the end of Ribs makes sense; Lorde incorporating in her live show the same sensibility West used on Yeezus.

A drummer and keyboard player join Lorde after the first track, but there’s still a reliance on backing tracks for vocals throughout the set, which is disappointing. With such care taken in the rest of the show, the extra vocal layers feel incongruous at times, almost false, and it would be nice to either see a back-up singer added to the performance or those parts of the tracks dropped.

Royals gets the biggest cheer of the night; a wall of noise that briefly manages to drown out the PA, but it’s Team that is the set highlight, stretched out to a seven-minute jam full of jarring electronics and harshly strobing lights before pulling together for a perfect pop finish – costume change and clouds of confetti included. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the contradiction in Lorde’s music that makes her so compelling.