【Down Town】

Lorde took to the stage at the Governor's Ball in New York City and Down Townseemed to command the skies. It looked almost certain to rain on festival-goers, but the singer would have none of it.

“I don’t know if you know this about me, but I think of myself as a witch,” she explained, taking credit for summoning the nice weather midway through her set at Governors Ball.

We all know Lorde is a witch. That's why we're here -- to see the cosmos bend at her will.

Lorde kicked off her set by emerging from a large glass box (we'll get to that later) singing version of "Green Light" stripped down to a haunting affect with a sort of floppy sunhat seemingly fashioned from discarded bridal veils obscuring her face. But according to the laws of magic, that was just a bait and switch, and after a verse or so, she moved on to older material.

Older, for Lorde, is still fresh in the grand scheme of things, but she's lived a thousand lives since Pure Heroinecame out in 2013. Some songs, like "Ribs" she says, have grown even more significant to her. That's what happens when you have supernatural powers, you see, you write songs from your own future.

Over the course of her stage banter, she addresses the crowd directly as “Governors Ball” (which, true) approximately 50 times with a charming familiarity. By the end of her set, I fully believe that Governors Ball is just some weird nickname my best friend, Lorde, came up with after staring into my soul and crystallizing my most distinct personality traits that I will come to understand in time.

While all this is happening, it's strangely easy to forget what's happening behind her, even though it's an elevated glass room that people are dancing in. Lorde has said that her forthcoming album, Melodrama, captures the highs and lows of a single house party. On stage, a sped up version of it is taking place -- they dance, mingle, rage, and collapse in a heap of exhausted bodies bracing for a hangover. Sometimes she joins them, sometimes the whole thing tilts on to the side.

Things slow down a bit when Melodrama's producer, Jack Antonoff of Bleachers, sits down at the piano with her. They play a stripped down cover of "Hang With Me" by Robyn, a mutual hero who had a revelatory set at last year's festival.

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Once everyone's appropriately vulnerable, it's time for "Liability," which they tackle as a duo after she explains the song is about coming to terms with the fact that, "everybody's gonna leave you eventually."

She covers more Melodramamaterial with "Sober," which has been a fixture in recent set lists but hasn't been released as a single. A special treat for the night's crowd is the first performance of "Perfect Places," the remedy to mainline into the systems of sweaty, substance-altered young bodies.

For Lorde's next supernatural act, a flock of geese in perfect formation flies overhead while she's singing the lyrics, "and you know we're on each other's teams." Are you a believer yet?

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"I'm not a very good pop star because really pop stars never need to catch their breath," she says, explaining a brief pause that no one else noticed. And then it's time for the catharsis. she sings "Green Light" with every last bit of energy she has. Lorde has coaxed the moon out of hiding and jade fireworks flash above our heads. "She thinks you like the beach, you're such a damn liar," we snarl collectively, warding off the hexes summer is threatening to send our way.

"Governor's ball was on some magical spiritual shit last night honestly," she wrote on Instagram when it was all said and done. Correct.