– By Kelly Cheng, Staff Writer
Who: Lorde, Blood Orange, The Japanese House
Where: TD Garden
When: Friday, September 26, 2025
Back from a two-year tour hiatus, Lorde has returned bigger and better than ever with the Ultrasound tour.
Lorde’s Ultrasound show at Boston’s TD Garden was a masterclass in radical honesty, stripping pop spectacle down to its intimate twilit core. Beneath TD Garden’s fluorescence on September 26th, the New Zealand artist didn’t just perform; instead, she allowed herself to come undone, blurring the lines between persona and person in real time as a crowd of thousands watched, rapt.
Electrifying Opening Acts
The evening commenced with atmospheric sets from The Japanese House and Blood Orange, preparing the crowd for an experience far more soulful than the typical arena bravado. The Japanese House opened with “Touching Yourself,” transporting the audience in a sun-soaked daze reminiscent of the transformative mood when Lorde’s Solar Power was first released. The band’s hit “Sunshine Baby” was equally mesmerizing and effective at energizing the crowd. Witnessing such a hypnotic, immersive set by the English band underscored just how inspired a choice they were as openers for Lorde.
Blood Orange’s set unfolded like the work of a true visionary. With his band, he delivered masterful mash-ups, remixes, and a well-balanced selection of his beloved top hits alongside tracks from his acclaimed new album, Essex Honey. Songs such as “Charcoal Baby,” “Jesus Freak Lighter,” and “Champagne Coast” electrified the arena, priming the audience for the main act and proving Blood Orange a creative genius.
Lorde Emerges Bare and Raw
Lorde emerged simply dressed, launching the show with “Hammer,” the perfect, throbbing opener from her new album Virgin. If past tours and albums saw Lorde dissecting her pop identity from a distance, Ultrasound rips away both glamour and mystique. Moments like removing her pants and revealing her Calvin Klein boxers during “Current Affairs” were beyond costuming, but an act of vulnerability. The Ultrasound tour came off not as performance for the sake of provocation; instead it was transfiguration.
Throughout the night, Lorde’s connection with her audience was both physical and emotional. Whether running on a treadmill during “Supercut,” theatrically collapsing in exhaustion mid-song, or duct-taping her chest for the devastating “Man of the Year,” Lorde foregrounded identity and control. The set design and deliberate choices between acts were an embodiment of Virgin, swapping pop polish for visceral emotion. Every element on stage serves both as entertainment and the show’s deeper commentary on visibility, gender, and subjectivity.
Ultrasound: Witnessing Lorde’s Sonic Metamorphosis in Action
Lorde’s new album Virgin was the night’s centerpiece, revealing a sonic journey through body image, generational trauma, and changing gender identity. But Lorde’s past was honored too. “Royals,” the 2013 hit that launched Lorde into her meteoric rise, was played early, its cultural weight transformed by the stripped-back context. The finale, “Ribs,” performed under a lone spotlight from a tiny soundboard platform, saw Lorde reach for a beam of light, hand glowing, before darkness cloaked her and the show ended. Throughout the show, Lorde manages to pay homage to her past, with reverence for the present, and a hint of what is yet to come, all while captivating the audience in the midst of her sonic metamorphosis.
Boston’s crowd was not so much an audience as a chorus, each voice weaving into the next until the boundaries between singer and listener blurred. Lorde greeted Boston with sincerity during her “Liability” monologue: “When you start doing anything when you’re a teenager, you really think it’s just all you— you don’t realize the network of support and love that is behind you. The older I’ve gotten, it felt less and less like an island; it’s not just me making sound in this room. Every single person in this room is making sound. We are in concert, Boston.”
With this heartfelt message, she performed “Liability” from the floor of the stage. An entire arena gathered in the same swelling emotion as “Liability” braided each individual longing into a collective catharsis. This is the kind of communion only Lorde could summon.
The true crescendo emerged in “David.” Lorde took to the arena floor in a jacket made of LED panels, weaving through the crowd in light, singing: “Why do we run to the ones we do? I don’t belong to anyone.” More than any high-flying stunt or dazzling visual, this lingered as the most radical part of the night, and audiences had the privilege of seeing the rare case of a superstar choosing transparency over detachment.
Beyond Spectacle
Lorde’s Ultrasound Tour is a revelation; unvarnished, earnest, and electrifyingly real. She doesn’t perform at the audience; she performs amongst them, with them, peeling away layers of artifice until only raw impulse and connection are left. In the era of spectacle, Lorde’s refusal to be anything other than herself on-stage is more than refreshing and even liberating. I walked amongst the near 20000 audience in attendance out of TD Garden that night not just entertained but affirmed: seen, heard, and forever changed.
