It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what Lana Del Rey has been doing for the last seven years. In 2012 she stormed the world with her debut album Born To Die, a unique collection of R&B tracks which somehow managed to evoke the soul of a bygone American era. Then, two years later, she returned with a low-key blues based follow up, about as far away from the radio friendly output of the debut as she could possibly get. Like the old pair of summer pants I tried on the other day, this split the fan base right down the middle. There were some who were left wanting for the Born To Die sound, and there were others wanting the latter, the more off the cuff stuff, the stuff that sounded like it had come out of a slightly dingy 70’s studio, with no motivation to surpass 100 million views on Youtube. A quick scroll through any of the thousand fan accounts on Instagram was enough to make this split obvious, but what wasn’t so obvious was the answer to a way more important question. What sound did Lana Del Rey want?
Cue 2017. The summer draws to a close, and Lana releases her fourth album Lust For Life, a wild concoction of both sounds. A record which felt audacious enough to have Playboi Carty and ASAP Rocky feature four songs before Stevie Nicks and Sean Ono Lennon; and the answer became pretty clear. Lana didn’t actually want to choose. She wanted both sounds, at the same time, and the result was as messy as blending a raspberry and banana smoothie without the lid on. The intent, however, had to be admired. For the first time since 2012, Lana Del Rey attempted to nail down a mixture of eras in a way no one has done before. It missed the mark. But at least she was aiming for it. And now, just two years later, she’s aiming for it again.
Straight off the bat, Norman Fucking Rockwell is Lana Del Rey’s most concise record yet. The tracks flow into one another like they belong in the same room, the sound remains constant, minimalist, but with enough spontaneity (often provided by the fine-tuned production of Jack Antanoff) to keep it interesting. The lyrics are thought provoking, casting out dark imagery of an American dream gone awry, leading Lana to ponder about her life, her hopes and her happiness in a way she’s never done before. The mixture of eras is seamless, exemplified by tracks such as “The Greatest”, “The Next Best American Record” and “How To Disappear”, all of which take pieces from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and the present, as if they were all part of the same jigsaw. Even wild cards like the Sublime cover “Doin’ Time” merge into the fray. That should have been the first off note, but instead it sits comfortably among the track list, bouncy and catchy enough to be the album’s radio single, and yet crucially restrained, with Lana’s vocals twisting the original reggae structure of the song to her own tone and rhythm.
Despite not having one big track, there are plenty of standouts. Opening track “Norman Fucking Rockwell” kicks off the album with a soft and airy Father John Misty-esque piano ballad, whilst “Venice Bitch” takes the listener on a 10 minute long epic journey down a sun clad Californian road, with Lana crooning about the end of the summer like the end of a ‘golden’ relationship. Elsewhere on the album there are songs which delve deeper into the human psyche. “Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It” plays out like excerpts of a hidden diary, where Lana likens herself to Sylvia Plath, cleverly twisting a piece of poetry on motherhood and the expectation of happiness to parallel her own experiences of fame. As a piece of work it is potentially her most effective, and like the record it closes, it says a lot about how far she’s come. Not only is her songwriting at its best, but it’s presented in an album which is assured of its own identity, succinct, a record which evokes era after era and yet fits perfectly inside 2019.
Put simply, the entire album is a pleasure to listen to. This is a result of seven years of patchy discography, a writer scratching incessantly at the page, attempting to tuck the pen into the sweet spot. For a fan like me, just listening to those attempts over the years was fulfilling enough, even without the knowledge that she would ever truly meld one and one together and finally hit the bullseye. But with Norman Fucking Rockwell, Lana Del Rey hits that bullseye, and the result is simply a must listen. Perhaps even the next best American record.
