Lorde debuts two new songs at UK festival – watch

Lorde debuted two new songs at a UK festival this weekend – you can see fan-shot footage below.

The New Zealand pop maverick had hinted at new material in an Instagram post just days earlier, although appeared to be speaking more in terms of feeling inspired to write than having new music ready to share. On Friday (August 11), though, she included a pair of new tracks, ‘Silver Moon’ and ‘Invisible Ink’, as part of her headlining set at Boardmasters Festival in Newquay, Cornwall.

It is not clear whether those are official titles or working ones. In the aforementioned social media post, shared after she’d played at Øya Festival in Norway, she had said: “After the show we went swimming…these times are beautiful and they freak me out and there’s so much to tell you,” she wrote. “No this is not the start of anything out there, just want u to know there’s a light on inside me…show it to you soon.”

Lorde‘s last album, the breezy, dreamy Solar Power, was the first of her career not to be universally acclaimed, meeting instead with mixed reviews. She has now wrapped touring for that album, and is dubbing this festival run the ‘Night Power’ tour, with rearranged versions of Solar Power tracks sitting alongside more faithfully reproduced takes on Pure Heroine and Melodrama material.

Earlier this year, she promised new music sooner than later. “It’s always my intention to move as quickly as I fucking can,” she told Ensemble in February. “I don’t want to wait, so take from that what you will.” Her sporadic updating of her Instagram story in recent weeks suggests she has been spending time in London, fuelling speculation that she may again be recording.

She had previously reflected on the reception that Solar Power received in a newsletter to fans on the one-year anniversary of its release. “I can honestly say [this] has been the year with the highest highs and the lowest lows I think I’ve ever experienced,” she wrote last June.

“It took people a while to get the album – I still get emails every day from people who are just coming around to it now! – and that response was really confounding and at times painful to sit with at first,” she continued. “I learnt a ton about myself and how I’m perceived by making and releasing this album, and I feel significantly more connected and alive in my art practice and life than pretty much ever before. Sounds dry but true!!!”