Ever since she emerged as America’s dark sweetheart over a decade ago, Lana Del Rey has been dogged by accusations that she’s a phoney. Obsessives – and she has always attracted obsessives – speculated on the possible contrivance of that smokey Twin Peaks vampishness, as though we should want our pop stars to arrive on stage straight off the school bus with no thought whatsoever given to image. Her real name isn’t even Lana Del Rey – lock her up!
Well, while she may look in photographs like the last 70 years never happened, since Chemtrails Over the Country Club which featured 10 of her real friends on the cover, on record Del Rey’s life is increasingly an open book. This far into her career there’s no sense that she’s looking for hit singles. She doesn’t sit neatly next to others on Spotify playlists. We must enter her world – she doesn’t care what our world might expect of her – and there’s plenty to see.
The album (we’ll save time by calling it Ocean Blvd) is her longest, and gets personal from the beginning. Opening song The Grants, one of umpteen languid piano ballads, mentions her grandmother, her sister and her neice. Another long title, and one of the stronger tunes, is Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of my Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing.
On the outlier oddity Peppers, with its electronic hip hop beat and a strange chorus from female rapper Tommy Genesis, she’s at home with her boyfriend, listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers before “I take off all my clothes/dance naked for the neighbours.” Margaret is titled for Margaret Qualley, the actress fiancée of her co-writer Jack Antonoff, and has a chorus that appears to be Antonoff’s band Bleachers gathered around the piano, singing together, making it up as they go.
This is an album where the music sits back in service to the words, of which there are many. She has spoken of “practising meditative automatic singing, where I don’t filter anything”. Early versions of some songs were made with Mike Hermosa, a filmmaker and ex-boyfriend with a casual attitude to music making because he isn’t a pro.
It means the structure is extremely loose, and it often feels indulgent. But what do Lana Del Rey fans want to do but indulge in their idol? The less obsessed can look elsewhere in her bulging catalogue for stronger songs with sharper focus. This is one for wallowing.
