Clutch those pearls, because I’m about to describe Lorde taking her top off at TD Garden Friday night.
Replace whatever you’re picturing — some lewd display, striptease or otherwise — with a matter-of-fact wardrobe change. After reciting the crystalline ballad “Clearblue,” the New Zealand singer turned on her heel, peeled off her plain T-shirt, and applied some duct tape to her bare chest with her back turned to the crowd. In the stripped-down getup, she performed “Man Of The Year,” a downtempo embrace of her masculine side from her June record, “Virgin.”
It’s a piece of a process Lorde’s previously called “the ooze”: letting herself unfold and extend any which way, physically or artistically. And she slathered plenty of that newfound freedom over every aspect of Friday night’s stop of her “Ultrasound” tour (the “Virgin” tour just doesn’t have the same ring to it).
Love the expression or loathe it, Lorde’s earned the right to “ooze” as she pleases. “Virgin” finds the singer-songwriter recovering from a breakup and an eating disorder, orchestrating her inner renaissance while she’s reeling from the whiplash. It’s not as hooky as her past work, but it’s honest to a fault, offering these confessions on a bed of icy synth-pop.
Not every “oozing” moment Friday night was obvious. Some brushes with independence were as simple as flailing around to opening song “Hammer,” an evolved form of the exorcism-esque mannerisms from her earliest performances. Other times it appeared through exhuming deep cuts like “A World Alone” and “No Better,” from Lorde’s debut LP, peppering the lesser-known songs from her teenage years into the full-bodied adulthood of “Virgin” — all 11 tracks of it, approximately half of the setlist.
Lorde’s never put much stock in frills — she has a song about that very topic called “Royals,” perhaps you’re familiar? — and Friday night’s performance upheld that ethos with production elements that seemed quaint in comparison to her 2010s pop contemporaries. Platforms hoisted her into the air for set peaks like “Team,” a 6-foot-tall fan tossed her hair to the drama of “Buzzcut Season,” blue lasers cast ribbons across her midsection for “Perfect Places.”
At one point, she dropped her jeans to reveal black Calvin Klein boxers and stayed in her skivvies for a few songs, including “GRWM” (short for “grown woman”). As she recited various physical features (“wide hips/tooth chipped”), one of her dancers held a camera to her midriff to flash close-up images of her body on the Jumbotron.
There’s “the ooze” again: a graphic but tasteful shrug in the direction of the skipped meals and covered mirrors she mentions on “Virgin.” Such a nonsexual display — that is, trading starving for comfortably showing some skin — felt reminiscent of appreciating nudes in an art museum.
Towards the end of the set, Lorde bounded through “What Was That,” the lead single from “Virgin” and her first song to hit No. 1 on U.S. Spotify since “Royals.” It’s meant to be a difficult glance in a relationship’s rearview, but the song took on a new life towards the set’s finale.
Duct tape, disrobing, unrefined dance moves — what was that? Answer: a messy, glorious rebirth, whether you care to understand “the ooze” or not.
LORDE
With Blood Orange and the Japanese House. At TD Garden, Friday
Victoria Wasylak can be reached at vmwasylak@gmail.com. Follow her on Bluesky @VickiWasylak.bsky.social.
Here’s the setlist from Friday night, according to setlist.fm. Keep checking back as the list continues to update.
