Lorde @ OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 19 Nov

The few campers who braced the Glasgow November cold to wait outside the Hydro for doors to open are long inside when we arrive, shaking off the frost to see what Lorde has got in store for us. Following support slots from Jim-E Stack and Nilüfer Yanya, Lorde is happy to be back in Glasgow for, as she remarks, the first time in eight years.

“I’ve been doing this for half my life now”, she tells the audience, and it is apparent from the way she dominates the stage just how much she has matured. Her latest album Virgin is what she is here to promote, and she intersperses songs from the record with older tracks, opening the show with Hammer, stood firmly below a single, striking laser light.

Fan favourites like Royals, Supercut and Green Light get the crowd moving and it is clear that this audience has grown up and changed alongside Lorde, and feel seen by her intricate, confessional lyricism. Lorde mentions what she calls “the transfer” – "What I love about pop music is that if I do my job right, the song stops belonging to me and it starts belonging to you", she says to roaring applause. The connection between her and her fans is apparent, and she reinforces it by making a point to move into the crowd for long moments during her set.

It is also clear that every step, every movement is carefully planned and rehearsed. The stage and light design is intricate, and flanked by her band and her two dancers, Lorde puts on a show that teeters somewhere between a theatrical and cinematic experience. Meanwhile, there is a rawness and vulnerability to it that speak to the level of maturity she has achieved as an artist. The costume changes we have come to expect from a pop show are there, but in a way that differentiates Lorde from her contemporaries: rather than going for flashy, extravagant outfits, she starts and ends the show in jeans and a T-shirt, at times stripping down to a simple pair of black Calvins and some silver duct tape stretched across her chest.

Her look speaks of an unpretentiousness that is apparent in her music, but at the same time seems to comment on her recent reflections on gender: ‘Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man’, she sings on Hammer. The whole show seems to play with ideas of androgyny – the outfits, the moves, the lyrics. Lorde is carving out an identity for herself that allows her to be androgynous, to move between different forms of gender expressions, without having to restrict herself to any specific labels.

Owning the slight awkwardness she has become known for, Lorde seems to have really come into herself, addressing the crowd in a way that feels genuine and heartfelt and leaving us all feeling slightly buzzed and very much understood.