Lana Del Rey Ultraviolence (2014) [limited Edition]

The maelstrom of hype surrounding self-modeled Hollywood pop star Lana Del Rey's 2012 breakthrough album, Born to Die, found critics, listeners, and pop culture aficionados divided about her detached, hyper-stylized approach to every aspect of her music and public persona. What managed to get overlooked by many was that Born to Die made such a polarizing impression because it actually offered something that didn't sound like anything else. Del Rey's sultry, overstated orchestral pop recast her as some sort of vaguely imagined chanteuse for a generation raised on Adderall and the Internet, with heavy doses of Twin Peaks atmosphere adding a creepy sheen to intentionally vapid (and undeniably catchy) radio hits. Follow-up album Ultraviolence shifts gears considerably, building a thick, slow-moving atmosphere with its languid songs and opulent arrangements…

The maelstrom of hype surrounding self-modeled Hollywood pop star Lana Del Rey's 2012 breakthrough album, Born to Die, found critics, listeners, and pop culture aficionados divided about her detached, hyper-stylized approach to every aspect of her music and public persona. What managed to get overlooked by many was that Born to Die made such a polarizing impression because it actually offered something that didn't sound like anything else…

Call Honeymoon the third installment in a trilogy if you will but there's no indication Lana Del Rey will put her doomed diva persona to rest after this album. Over the course of three albums, Lana Del Rey hasn't so much expanded her delicately sculpted persona as she has refined it, removing anything extraneous to her exquisite ennui. Honeymoon doesn't drift or float, it marks time, sometimes swelling with a suggestion of impending melodrama but often deflating to just an innervated pulse. Apart from the syncopated chorus on "High on the Beach," any lingering element of the hip-hop affectations of Born to Die have been banished and so have the shade and light Dan Auerbach brought to Ultraviolence, a record that feels cinematic in comparison to Honeymoon…

Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (born June 21, 1985), known professionally as Lana Del Rey, is an American singer and songwriter. Her music has been noted by critics for its stylized cinematic quality, its preoccupation with themes of tragic romance, glamour, and melancholia, and its references to pop culture, particularly 1950s and 1960s Americana…

If Lana Del Rey's 2021 album Chemtrails Over the Country Club felt like the atmospheric post-script to her 2019 master statement Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Blue Banisters comes off like the addendum to the post-script. Released just seventh months after its predecessor, Blue Banisters isn't too far removed from the midtempo, woozy tones that defined that album. The 15 tracks here span about an hour running time, and generally stick to the familiar framework of sad-hearted torch songs for a burning world that Lana has built her entire discography on. Closely inspecting the songwriting, production, performance, and sequencing choice on Blue Banisters, however, reveals some moments of quiet evolution.

Lana Del Rey knows perfectly well her Lust for Life sounds sleepy in comparison to Iggy Pop's full-blooded roar, but that doesn't mean the title of her fourth album is ironic. Compared to her previous albums, especially its somnolent 2015 predecessor, Honeymoon, Lust for Life is positively ebullient in tone, if not in tempo. Lana Del Rey may sing about a "Summer Bummer" but the song isn't in sway to a narcotic undertow; it simmers, offering a cool bit of seduction for muggy August nights. LDR retains this delicate balance throughout the lengthy Lust for Life (at 71 minutes, this is an album as playlist, designed to be looped over and over as mood music), never quite succumbing to either despair or ecstasy but rather finding a place where there's no separation between the two emotions.