It was August of 2021. Those years of the pandemic often bleed into each other, and I have to trawl through my camera roll to differentiate between my memories of its sluggish haze. But this is how I recognise that strange August: while we plunged into our longest lockdown yet and the nation steeled itself for another stretch of isolation, Lorde was busy releasing the most polarising album of her career, Solar Power. It is an ode to the magic of a New Zealand summer and the beauty of the natural world, perfectly delivered for us to enjoy in the dead of winter from the comfort of our solitary confinement. The irony felt a little cruel.

Solar Power was met with a surprisingly lukewarm reception. Perhaps it was the pared-back, straightforward soft-rock production and whispery vocals, or the disposition too superficially sunny for an artist whose major selling point has always been her introspection. It’s ‘put down your phone’, ‘appreciate nature’ and ‘have a fun summer’—truisms of a Californian wellness guru. Whatever depth you might excavate from its lyrical content is washed out by the album’s soft breeziness, which felt unusually light, dissonant and out of touch, at odds with a world too heavy for escapism.

Two years on, I sunbathe in Basque Park and succumb to an unexpected urge to revisit ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’. Maybe I’m finally getting it. The economy is in shambles, I am struggling to pay rent in a housing crisis that has persisted for four decades, and yet, here I am, luxuriating in the grass and committed to my total nonchalance. We play the role of untouched paradise well. Strife and worry lurk just beneath the surface, but it’s summer, and the antidotes of sunshine and fresh air are enough to numb us to any genuine concern. And under the feel-good neohippie stoner beach sounds of Solar Power, Lorde pokes fun at these sensibilities: holding up a mirror to a culture so easy-going and relaxed it fears actually caring about something. We can pretend it all away if we just throw our cellular devices in the water, can’t we?

The strength of Solar Power is in its subtlety. It satirises the perfect summers of Aotearoa: lounging on the beach, getting stoned at the park, doing nothing, chasing fun, equal parts bliss and restlessness. We are the island of lotus eaters, always languishing, always relaxing. It follows that perhaps Solar Power is Lorde’s most cynical album yet. The great outdoors is the cure to all sadness, no matter the crisis unfolding around us. And that’s not to say there aren’t moments of sincerity scattered throughout, bittersweet mosaics of nostalgia and self-reflection that scratch the itch for a particular brand of navel-gazing. But when the music washes over you as you’re listlessly gazing up at the long white clouds, you also can’t shake the sense that she’s taunting you a little.