Consumer Guide Album

Lorde: Virgin [Universal New Zealand/Republic, 2025]
Well, she did call her debut album Pure Heroine, so why not something equally provocative? After all, Virgin has never been her label and if this New Zealand-spawned ingenue still has her hymen she sure doesn't act like it, impressive though it is that she remains some kind of ingenue at 29 and even more impressive that a fair helping of the erotic adventures and perplexities she references here seem to take place in lower Manhattan. What's love like for a teendream who's pushing 30? Well, "MDMA in the back garden, blow our pupils up/We kissed for hours straight." Or "I'll kick you out and pull you in." Or "Don't know if it's love or it's ovulation/When you're holding a hammer everything looks like a nail." A−