Lana Del Rey

when blots go wrong

hmmm i dont see it, must just be you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEN6vsEzw5g&feature=player_embedded

i finally understand

um, er, no relationship between my response to MJ's excellent VV piece and the post that follows. yikes.

:)

When I read the Maura Johnston review and she writes the line "Is That All There Is?" suddenly Cristina from Ze Records popped in my mind. Could it be said that Cristina and Lana Del Rey have some musical attributes in common: The ambivalence; the affected voice; the I come from a rich background but there is more to me than this pretty face. Also the inability to perform. There is virtually no live performances of Cristina and she later on has a medical problem preventing her to go out to the real world. But Lana obv doesn't have an excuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AybvLztacFM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1lqi29BVXE

And yes I'm up late because I can't sleep due to starting a new job this morning.

Short, depressed-sounding Rolling Stone interview:

"People don't have anything nice to say about this project. I'm sure that's why you're writing about it."

Well, she's otm there. It is why so many media are writing about it tbh

"I thought I looked beautiful and sang fine."

that's a weird way to put it.

just rewatched that snl youtube and wow her arms really were awkward, but it reminded me that the foster the people guy arguably had even worse stage presence than her on snl last year

― lana del rey: everythang's workin' (some dude), Tuesday, January 31, 2012 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha yes both of these performances made me feel so embarrassed for them, hard to watch

this has been fun and all but it's time to fight the real enemy

wtf is this glarfhhhvsz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CYbqDykTu8

pamplemoose thread graduates

they make me hate the internet so much

if this is our new standard of pop performer then yes LDR=lenny cohen

hah

that is bad music but it isn't truly terrible until the scat singing/air guitar. then it goes back to bad.

the idea that they have "hip hop" tunes on youtube is a little disconcerting.

tell me Howe this ends cuz I pulled out my eyes and ears 20 seconds In

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaUKkuxVxeo

FP

the foster the people guy arguably had even worse stage presence than her on snl last year

I am so happy that I missed this

foster the people performance on snl was hilarious too, but more because singer had seriously bloodshot eyes and the back-up tamborine man was VERY animated. they didn't fail to get the song over, though.

i know the defense is that everyone looks nervous on SNL but not everyone's trying to push over a bond-theme ballad when they can't sing

my fave bad performance from last year was that brit band who played on letterman and letterman couldn't stop laughing and he made fun of their drummer and they all kinda slunk off the stage. hahaha! that was great. the band was like bad coldplay or something and the drummer thought he was in lightning bolt. oh god that was truly awful.

well that's what i said way up top there. video games is like singing a capella. you are really alone singing that song! they should have had the music drown her out.

ello were bad coldplay from the united kingdom!

re-watching the foster the people performance, singer really does look like he's been pulled over by a cop and nervously submitting to a dance test to prove he's not totally wasted.

hey karmin is playing snl soon, I think lorne michaels is trying to troll the internet all at once, maybe the entire free world

"is that your regular drummer?" hahaha!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvsHJjldYW8

hey nice job way to go buddy! lol

thank you gentlemen, thanks for being-- ok, what, ok you don't... ok, see ya! goodbye! goodnight everybody!

ugh. kinda reminds me of an entirely uninteresting future islands? [via vocal mannerisms]

... and OF COURSE their other song titles would include: "we bros", "brooklyn girls", "videogame sandwich diamonds"

Been steering clear of this thread but greatly enjoyed Maura's article that was linked.

Listened to the album again on headphones this morning and I like it all the less for that. I keep thinking how amazing some of these songs would sound had it been a year ago and, say, Amy Winehouse was on them. LDR doesn't have enough personality in her voice to make these songs work. Doesn't help that the production is really thin throughout - the whole record seems to strain for a grandeur that it can't reach.

a strain for things she cant reach is at the core of the ldr h8 in my pro opinion

i think the production is too much, actually - very little is as sparse as "video games", too often the songs are sort of slathered in unnecessary strings and get corny vaguely hip-hop beats and samples tacked on to them.

ok i am officially listening to this for the next hour or however long it takes

spotify -> "enable private session"

haha

lol

thanks for the kind words everyone, and yes i was totally thinking of the cristina 'is that all there is?' when i wrote that last graf

well then.

first thing: everyone on the production side of this should be ashamed of themselves--it's a terrible sounding record. portishead by way of a st vincent depaul thrift store with no polish, no cohesion, no ideas. it seriously sounds like it was put together by a bunch of old guys who have no idea what is cool and what might actually sound good. after it was over i immediately put on the precedent for what this record should have sounded like: mono - "life in mono" c. 1997 which at least had some *style* not a bunch of dorky mashed together beats and strings.

second thing: ldr herself. i think we all agree that she's talented but she is either not comfortable with singing, or not comfortable with singing this music, or she just doesn't have much of a natural ear. i heard so much odd phrasing and timing, when she would slip into and out of different voices it was just awkward. she's best doing the deep droll-y voice but they also try to make her sing high and breathy and then like a big pop singer and then doing some weird pseudo-rap thing that i don't even understand. like the production, this all could have been fixed with time and effort but no one seemed to really care.

last thing: there were times where i could close my eyes and try really hard and see the trashy/kitschy fun of some of this (and that's an aesthetic i strongly dislike to be fair) but the album just vacillates too much between that and moments of legitimately embarrassing material and moments that are just so joyless and po-faced that i can't imagine how someone would enjoy this as a pop record. oddly my fav track is "this is what makes us girls" which is kind of awful but is at least *about something* and seems to wink a bit unlike most of the other songs which seem to be the lyrical embodiment of that video where ldr doesn't do anything except embrace the guy with tats.

have Wu Lyf REALLY got a song called Videogame Sandwich Diamonds? about 5 years ago Manchester clubs, bands, etc were *drowning* in Talking Heads references so it wouldn't surprise me.

r they wu-affiliated idgi

did you watch the letterman clip? seems likely

is the the drummer papa wu i think maybe

what this record should have sounded like: mono - "life in mono"

yes!!! have been reading the "this sounds like 90s trip-hop" criticisms everywhere but none of them were very specific, and a lot of the bigger trip-hop acts seem way off-base as comparison points. but this, yeah - cuz i think mono were also aiming for a kind of lynchian vibe here too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aa1tEh82I

talking of lynch though, i think this record could've been a lot better if it had been really stripped down à la julee cruise's first album - most of the songs have the hooks to survive that treatment.

i think that's true--nothing about the songwriting seemed objectionable to me tho it was almost totally oversahdowed by bad arrangements, weird singing, or stupid lyrics

FWIW, Siobhan de Maré of Mono hit the Lynchian vibe perfectly once she hooked up with Robin Guthrie.

i'd totally forgotten about violet indiana and had definitely forgotten it was the same girl - i really liked their first EP