In the age of generational grandstanding, when “nepo babies” break a sweat to disclaim their indeniable benefits of their dad and mom’ traces of labor, it now appears quaint that 10 years in the past, Lana Del Rey was controversial for her acute lack of background. Who was this mysterious all-American lady right here to croon about blue-collar boys and the Hollywood Hills? How may she sing so knowingly about dive bar romances if she used a pen title? We may deal with Lady Gaga, whose rebirth from Stefani Germanotta was cloaked in flank steaks and vaudevillian drama. But in selecting a stage title, the lady raised Lizzy Grant appeared to lose her capacity to assert the particular person she was earlier than her rechristening. Her songs, even of their specificity, have been written off as report label retconning, a ghostwriter drafting the heartbreak and torment that will match on the lips of a girl known as Lana Del Rey. Lana Del Rey won’t have a household, however Lizzy Grant does, and on her ninth album, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, they’re the centerpiece of her heartbreak.
Opening monitor “The Grants,” the final single to return out earlier than the album’s launch, introduces us to the principle characters of Del Rey’s world for the time being: her religion, her ageing physique, and her bloodline. “My pastor told me when you leave, all you take is your memories,” she sings, her voice drifting upwards as if to direct the music in the direction of the sky. As for her destiny, she gestures in the direction of it shakily all through the album. But each time she goes, she’s bringing her sister’s baby and her grandmother’s smile to the pearly gates along with her.
Family and loss of life are twin ghosts haunting Ocean Blvd all through the album, as if finality is the one fixed in her life. On “Kintsugi,” she recounts the final days of her grandmother’s life in predictable beats: tears, laughter, and a singular reference to her boyfriend, Salem’s Jack Donoghue, as a consolation throughout grief. But extra susceptible, extra actual, extra Lana, extra Lizzy, is her alienation whereas surrounded by her family members. “How do my blood relatives know all of these songs,” she asks, genuinely incredulous. Even the 14-year-old can sing “Froggie Came A-Courtin,” but right here she is, the brightest star within the room, standing there questioning who will sing the songs she is aware of when her time comes.
Ocean Blvd is marked by absence — by means of loss of life, typically, however simply as poignantly, by means of omission. Lana lingers in her grief on “Fingertips,” singing in regards to the loss of life by suicide of her uncle, whose funeral she missed as a result of she was performing for the Prince of Monaco. She wonders aloud if her father, sister, and brother might be by her aspect in 10 years — that’s, if she makes it that lengthy earlier than her DNA atrophies. Where is her mom? She’s a lacuna, an ellipsis in a later verse: “What kind of… was she to say I’d end up in institutions?” Del Rey sings. “What the fuck’s wrong in your head to send me away,” she cries, and all of a sudden, it’s no marvel she’s having second ideas about motherhood on the identical music. And then, in fact, there’s the mouthful of a music title, “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” — a collaboration with the classical pianist Riopy — which finds her searching for indicators that somebody is up above, sending her butterflies.
“A&W,” a seven-minute, winding epic, may stand in as a thesis assertion for your entire Lana Del Rey venture. It begins with Del Rey cartwheeling at 9 years outdated, and ends lightyears away in a strung-out lovelorn spiral. The verses listed below are whispered, and phrases mix into one another — Del Rey used a technique of meditative automated singing to write down the album — however they sketch out a map of her chaotic, sharpened thoughts. “Do you really think I give a damn?” she asks, as if her resilience after 10 years of relentless paparazzi alone weren’t sufficient of an implied reply. She sings with putting frankness about rape tradition, madonna-whore complexes, the double customary of ageing whereas feminine: “Did you know a singer can still be looking like a sidepiece at 33?” She’s used to being the opposite lady, it appears, but it surely doesn’t make it harm any much less. And then, about 4 minutes into the acoustic, piano-driven music, a padded beat drops, then two, till a buzzing backline of bass propels the music into one other dimension. Here, we meet “Jimmy,” who smokes cocaine-laced joints as a giddy Del Rey teases, “Your mom called, I told her, you’re fucking up big time.” It’s a journey of a music, however one which successfully attracts a straight line from girlhood to being an “American whore”; from being a princess to sleeping in motels; from being Lizzy Grant to turning into Lana Del Rey.
The two halves of “A&W” mirror the development of the album as an entire: From the wispy piano ballads of Ocean Blvd’s first half to the Auto-Tune and snare drum snaps of its second. In a break from the flip in the direction of Laurel Canyon lullabies she made on Norman Fucking Rockwell!, LDR lets her hair down a bit extra right here. With the assistance of frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff (who sneaks in his greatest Bruce Springsteen impression on the love letter to his fiancée, “Margaret”), she retains the spaciousness that outlined her new sound — the ethereal vacancy between piano strokes the place her voice melts, bends, and retreats — whereas reintroducing the rhythms that outlined her breakout albums. “Fishtail,” with its elongated vowels and breathy repetitions about disappointment, seems like Lust For Life Lana born anew, with the arrogance to veer off beat and write lyrics like “I wish I could skinny-dip inside your mind.” “Peppers,” which opens with a pattern from Tommy Genesis’ “Angelina,” is a proving floor for this mixture: She can pull again on the Gatsby-esque spectacle of “Young And Beautiful” and nonetheless pack a punch whereas working her mouth about nothing in any respect.
On an album that extends far past the hour mark, the 2 interludes really feel extra like responsible pleasures than needed additions: The second, from Jon Batiste, follows his duet with Del Rey “Candy Necklace.” Their pairing is pure — they really feel like outdated pals as they snicker about nothing and every part directly. But the primary is extra inexplicable: A weird, grainy telephone recording of megachurch pastor Judah Smith, which solely highlights the harshness within the tenor of his voice, the quantity of his shouting, the depth in his phrases. His sermon feels misplaced subsequent to the subtlety and sexuality of her lyrics previous his music — It’s arduous to take significantly somebody who calls God a “rhino designer” after grooving by means of the oozing deviance of “A&W.” But the laughter on the recording is a reminder that Lana Del Rey is who she says she is, on a regular basis: She could be a sexed up “American whore” fucking on a lodge flooring in a single music, and a church woman, laughing within the pews, praying for salvation within the subsequent.
There’s a way on Ocean Blvd that life is fleeting, crumbling, marked for deprecation from the beginning. There’s these pesky telomeres on “Fingertips,” a deadly flaw constructed into the human genome. And then there’s all of the small methods she destroys herself — chasing dangerous romances, working away from something resembling house. Even the album’s namesake is an homage to the buried: On the album’s title monitor, she particulars an precise tunnel closed off to the general public, its paths forgotten by the march of time. She thinks about when Harry Nilsson sings, “Don’t forget me.” The means the music is written, she will get to sing, “Don’t forget me,” too. There’s a wistful irony in listening to these phrases from somebody so unbelievably identified, a minimum of within the public eye. But she doesn’t care if the general public remembers her. She simply needs her grandfather to face on her father’s shoulders and ship her three white butterflies, as if to say, “I remember.”