Lorde in concert at the Corner Hotel, Richmond.

Lorde at the Corner Hotel in Richmond. Photo: Aleksandar Jason

Reviewer rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Corner Hotel, October 21

She's only sixteen. It's something you have to remind yourself of frequently while watching Kiwi singer Lorde perform, because everything else betrays the fact - her smouldering gaze, her jaunty, jolty, distinctly unlearned dance moves, lyrics that would be the envy of those twice her age. In a few short months, Lorde, born Ella Yelich-O'Connor, has shot from obscurity to superstardom. She writes about rappers whose lyrics speak of a world foreign to her and her friends, but Lorde, currently sitting at No. 1 on the US Billboard and UK charts and the subject of Lena Dunham and Tavi Gevinson's tweets, will likely soon be swigging Grey Goose and trippin' in the bathroom, just like the celebrities she sings about in Royals.

Perhaps not yet though. She's only sixteen. At the Corner Hotel on Monday night, she plays for a little more than an hour and it's hard to take your eyes off her. She wears a black midriff-baring top with a lace underlay, black genie pants, crimson lipstick and a black choker. She dances and flips her glorious mane of curls as if the music is coursing through her veins, and her album title, Pure Heroine, starts to make more sense.

The crowd are less energetic, and Lorde seems to like us a little less for it. "I find that when I come to Melbourne people are pretty well-mannered," she says, and it's not a compliment. On more than one occasion she urges the crowd to dance, but it's a Monday night, and perhaps Lorde is yet to realise that her music - and her stage presence - can have an anaesthetising effect. The songs are blissfully immersive, but not necessarily conducive to dancing.

Like a lot of 16-year-olds, Lorde likes Kanye West, and she covers his Hold My Liquor, hissing and cursing with relish. She also covers Swingin' Party by the Replacements, a song that not so many 16-year-olds would be familiar with. It's for her dad, who's in the audience. Watching Lorde, you get the feeling she's not like most other girls her age.

Her one-hour set includes cuts from Pure Heroine and from her first EP, The Love Club, as well as an unreleased song, Good Fights. Album highlight Ribs is as hypnotic live as on the record, her own voice layered over a harmony of ghostly sighs as she purrs, "And I've never felt more alone/It feels so scary getting old."

Lorde sings of the hopes and fears that teenagers exchange at the skate park - or Tennis Court - by moonlight, but with the explosion of her first album, she's closer to living the Royals fantasy. As suddenly as it may have happened, you get the feeling Lorde might have suspected it was coming all along.

"But I learnt not to want/The quiet of the room with no one around to find me out," she sings on opener, Bravado, the first song off The Love Club.

"And I can tell you that when the lights come on I'll be ready for this."