Lana Del Ray, real name Lizzie Grant, has produced an album that can at times be described as a glacial, cinematic sweep through an open meadow.
No, just run with me for a second. The sun is popping off the horizon and the soft heave of the wind is rustling the sundress the artist wears as she lollops through the Indian grass, beholden to no one, singing to herself, perhaps chewing a stalk or looking skywards, a little girl lost and found all at once.
What is wrong with this picture? Well, this is 2012 is what, and musicians who produce music which evokes the kind of aforementioned images aren’t in Rolling Stone pages, on Saturday Night Live stages or in our collective consciousness. They are in studios producing opuses that flirt with obscurity or downright embrace it, or in studios composing instrumentals for Hollywood films that generate a hundred million dollars. But Lana Del Ray could be such an artist.
So why isn’t she? Well, on evidence of her major label debut, ‘Born to Die‘, it’s because she is straddling territories, kind of intrigued by being Alison Goldfrapp, but all too entranced by the frolicsome, cheap pizzazz of Lada Gaga, Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. She can haunt and annoy almost simultaneously. By turns her songs are profound, sickly, edgy, arrantly stupid, beautiful, expansive and compact. Sometimes this can be charming, like reading a great novelist who has you hooked from the first page but misuses apostrophes. At other times, though, it can be maddening.
‘Born to Die’ starts with the title track, a gloomy insight into this ingénue’s frame of mind at this time of her life, or at the very least an indication of her musical leanings. Del Ray has a soft teenager’s voice, a slight Southern inflection creeping through her twenty-five year old lungs, and the mournful tone suits ‘Born to Die‘, which is a sweeping and quite lovely song with a compelling chorus (if you can ignore the line “let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain”, which sounds more Taylor Swift than Tyler Durden), a lot less than it suits song two,
‘Off to the Races‘, which yet again references a kiss (“kiss me on my open mouth” sung in a sickly sweet Shirley Temple voice) and is considerably more hip-hop oriented. It’s not that Del Rey is uncomfortable with the edgy material and rap style beats of ‘Off to the Races’. Daughter of an internet millionaire, she probably should be, but she just about pulls off the savvy, street smart girl on the pavement persona in the same way as she does the wide-eyed girl sketched in the first paragraph of this review. It’s only that the latter is far more alluring.
‘Blue Jeans‘ favours this style; another delicate arrangement, some tempting beats, panoramic in scope and melodramatically maudlin. This is where Del Ray operates best, even if her storytelling is often clichéd and, at times, repetitive. Because with a voice as distinctive, with production as slick, it doesn’t matter a whole lot; it’s very listenable and regularly calming. In short, it’s rare to hear an artist as young sound so world-weary, encapsulate so much fervour in her voice, even if the content may occasionally grate.
Lead single ‘Video Games‘ is undeniably great – a heartfelt track carried along almost exclusively by Lana’s voice, which is certainly not something you could say about the songs of aforementioned tripartite Gaga, RiRi and Minaj, but is a talent you could ascribe to the likes of Annie Lennox, Cat Power, Patti Smith or the late Amy Winehouse.
Lana Del Rey could not have made an album of songs like ‘Video Games’, could she? She would have been dismissed as a one-trick pony and confined to the music margins, much like credible female vocalists such as Joanna Newsom. But the flirtations with other genres, and particularly with the ‘gangsta’ elements on the likes of ‘Diet Mountain Dew‘, with its kitschy, echolalia chorus, and ‘Lolita‘, which sees Lana again adopt the role of youthful chanteuse, don’t seem to be the best use of a voice so fine.
One gets the impression of Del Rey as something of a musical Blanche Dubois. Tragic? Certainly. Boastful? Sometimes. Glamorous? Undeniable. But one wants to scratch the surface, peel back the bling and baubles and find out who Lana Del Rey really is. We’re certainly no closer to finding out on forgettable, vaguely risqué songs like ‘National Anthem‘ with its cringeworthy, Taylor Swift-esque lyrics (“red, white, blue is in the sky, summer’s in the air and baby heaven’s in your eyes”) and, in the same breath, contrived talk of “drinkin and drivin, overdosin’ and dyin”, but we may be close on tempered tunes such as ‘Carmen‘, with its whispered falsetto and swelling instrumentation, or the coquettish ‘Dark Paradise‘.
The album tapers off a little in its final third, and in truth could have easily been trimmed from 15 songs to nine or ten. Indeed, subtract some of the lesser songs, tighten up a few lyrics on the better ones, and ‘Born to Die’ could be a bit of a classic. It could be a cult hit as opposed to a mainstream one. It could have sold 5,000 copies in its first day of release in the UK as opposed to 50,000.
As it is, ‘Born to Die’ is a flawed album, an odd potion of hip hop, pop, indie and love songs both catchy and clingy. If you like piano-led reflection with some strong dosages of so-so pop and hip hop, you’ll love this record.
If you don’t, it won’t leave a firm imprint on your memory, but for an echo of a girl in a meadow singing to herself as the sun fades out of the sky…
Very uncompromising verdict and strong accent of jealousy throughout. “so-so” wrong, Mr Ronnie- this is just the matter of your individual, subjective opinion. Numbers not always wrong- just check number YouTube hits. Your review doesn’t stick.
“Born to Die” one of the best songs released in the last couple years and definitely one song to be remembered. A true vocal gem in the pile of acoustic rubbish our ears being stuffed with every day. Well done, Lana