Continued from part I.
Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019)
Norman Fucking Rockwell! signals the beginning of the second act of Lana Del Rey’s career. Her previous records felt like they were made by stylised versions of herself – the white trash harlot of her debut, the depressed East Coast ice queen of Born to Die, the equally depressed Californian rock chick of Ultraviolence, and the yet more depressed, pill popping, 1960s housewife of Honeymoon. Norman Fucking Rockwell!, however, seems less calculated, a coming-of-age record by someone entering their 30s and “fresh out of fucks forever.” Certainly, the theme of tormented, consuming love continues to accompany the listener; on the disquieting “Venice Bitch”, on the devoted, fatalistic pair of “California” and “Fuck It I Love You”, or most affectingly, on the intensely forlorn “Cinnamon Girl”, one of the saddest moments in Lana’s discography. And yet, the neglected, codependent girlfriend of previous records is now the one in control, her lover reduced to a “goddamn manchild” on the withering title track, or the weaker, needier party on the rousing “Mariner’s Apartment Complex”. Equally significant is that Lana increasingly appears to be consciously recognising and commenting on own place in the broader history of American music. The overall sound of Norman Fucking Rockwell! is heavily reminiscent of 70s soft-rock, and the lyrics are peppered with references to the Eagles, the Beach Boys, and their author’s determination to “write the next great American record.”
* * * *
Standout track: “Mariner’s Apartment Complex”
Chemtrails over the Country Club (2021)
With Chemtrails over the Country Club, for the first time, Lana Del Rey released an album without completely reinventing her musical style. Norman Fucking Rockwell! drew on 70s soft rock – Chemtrails takes this tendency to its logical conclusion and goes full-on country. We’re a world away here from the big city lights of Born to Die, the Californian opium dens of Ultraviolence, or the plush sea-lapped beaches of Honeymoon. The word “ranch” is mentioned three times on this album. Fortunately, the songwriting is strong. Several are characteristically unsettling; the haunting, dreamy title track ominously conjures a sense of impending danger in a place of safety; the sinister love song “Tulsa Jesus Freak” portrays a bible-reading pillar of the community with a bottle of liquor hidden in his pocket; the menacing “Yosemite”, the non-changing of the seasons in the Californian wilderness; while “Dark but Just a Game” comes closest to channelling the beat-laden pop of earlier records. But despite these darker moments, Chemtrails over the Country Club is a remarkably warm and good-natured album. “White Dress”, the opener, looks fondly back on Lana’s pre-fame years as a waitress; “Let Me Love You Like a Woman” and “Wild at Heart” are affecting love songs and unashamed declarations of self-acceptance; “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” is mellow and reassuring; while the defiant “Dance Til We Die” should have been the album closer.
* * *
Standout track: “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”
Blue Banisters (2021)
After over a decade of making music and releasing seven very good to excellent albums, Blue Banisters arguably represents Lana Del Rey’s first misstep. It was released a mere seven months after Chemtrails Over the Country Club and, thematically, the two albums are linked, as they were both written during her torrid relationship with an Oklahoman police officer and reality TV star, maybe the closest thing the 21st century has to an actual cowboy, which explains the 19th century frontier vibe of the two albums. On Blue Banisters, however, this borders on Wild Western cosplay, with Ennio Morricone-style trumpets and, in fact, an actual excerpt from the soundtrack of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. But if the warm and upbeat Chemtrails reflects the first flush of new love, then Blue Bannisters is the breakup album. The title track is an eerie and mournful paeon to Lana’s girlfriends, who comforted her when things fell apart, while the rest of the album is speckled with bitter denunciations of her rugged ex-lover, such as “Black Bathing Suit”, “If You Lie Down With Me”, and “Violets for Roses”. Sadly, Blue Bannisters’ sound comprises a fairly unimaginative extension of its predecessor’s mellow, plaintive, piano-driven balladry – but the songwriting is weaker, the album less concise. In comparison to her other records, it’s a bit of a borefest.
* *
Standout track: “Blue Banisters”
Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (2023)
As already mentioned, Lana’s discography can be split into two distinct phases – from Lana Del Rey to Lust for Life, a stylised, performative, musically and visually varied series of pop records, largely about doomed romance; from Norman Fucking Rockwell!, a more mature and musically cohesive succession of borderline country albums. Ocean Boulevard is still recognisably in the latter tradition – like its two predecessors, it is replete with piano-driven, string-inflected ballads. But whereas Chemtrails and Blue Bannisters invoked the frontier communities of the American West, Ocean Boulevard’s pianos are deep, dark, and dramatic, the lyrics bordering on stream of consciousness, spoken word poetry, much of it about Lana’s family members, living and dead. In fact, the entire album feels like a form of personal therapy for its creator. This proves to be a hit and miss exercise – the album’s best moments are stirring (“The Grants”, “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father”), unsettling (“A&W”), and crushingly sad (“Candy Necklace”, “Paris, Texas”), but others are overly long and not very tuneful (“Kintsugi”, “Fingertips”). The closing tracks represent a truly strange and incongruous collapse into discombobulatingly trippy pop and rap, which only underlines the uncomfortably personal nature of this compelling psychodrama of an album.
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Standout track: “Paris, Texas”
Overall ranking
1. Born to Die (* * * * *)
2. Honeymoon (* * * * *)
3. Ultraviolence (* * * *)
4. Norman Fucking Rockwell! (* * * *)
5. Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (* * *)
6. Chemtrails over the Country Club (* * *)
7. Lust for Life (* * *)
8. Lana Del Rey (* * *)
9. Blue Bannisters (* *)
Selected playlist
1. Born to Die
2. Queen of the Gas Station
3. West Coast
4. Summertime Sadness
5. Mariners Apartment Complex
6. Honeymoon
7. Chemtrails Over the Country Club
8. Blue Bannisters
9. Young and Beautiful
10. Get Free