Lorde: Melodrama review – maximum overwrought

(Virgin EMI)
The New Zealand singer cranks up the intensity on her second album, balanced by enough moments of weirdness to intrigueMelodrama’s cover art – by New York artist Sam McKinniss – casts Lorde as a colour-dappled bohemian synaesthete. The singer’s second album, however, is emphatically not a cry from a draughty atelier. It has an unenviable act of tonal balance to pull off: yielding glossy ear-crack that will burn its way through Spotify playlists, while retaini