Lana Del Rey

can someone esplain this "flag post" thing to me?

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the kid

She kinda reminds me of Emmylou Harris. Or Christine McVie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFujVHeQJ0Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIKkveUcBPc

There's obviously a lot more going on in the LDR image, but its got that same kind of slightly vague glassy eyed affect. Sort of coked out cocktail pop with an immaculately maintained surface sheen. Gives me that same feeling as a lot of late 70s pop of this deeply loathsome and twisted emotional life buffed and perfected into consumable form.

Like Christine McVie's songs on Tusk, there's just an emptiness that I find really interesting. Its pretty difficult to smuggle that kind of desolation into people's lives via pop. A completely different sound but very similar vibe. Laurel Canyon pushed through distant memories of the Sneaker Pimps or Shirley Manson.

Think Emmylou far outshines her as a vocalist though. And Christine too.

The character she plays seems like it would be at home at the same parties that they went to.

I feel really badly for the woman whose art is getting shredded on this thread and elsewhere BTW.

Liz Phair is used to it by now...

Probably why she feels some empathy for her.

I've got no love for the tumblr PR machine though, get sick watching both it and the backlash. Churnalism and snark, you can have it all back thanks. I'm going to keep listening to this and the Weeknd though.

Gives me that same feeling as a lot of late 70s pop of this deeply loathsome and twisted emotional life buffed and perfected into consumable form.

Like Christine McVie's songs on Tusk, there's just an emptiness that I find really interesting. Its pretty difficult to smuggle that kind of desolation into people's lives via pop. A completely different sound but very similar vibe. Laurel Canyon pushed through distant memories of the Sneaker Pimps or Shirley Manson.

Raymond Carver pop?

It could be, its music that seems to be intensely aware of the consequences of excess.

I like the Weeknd's Thursday mix tape for the same reason, its not about how great the party is, its about the downside of the pills and the liquor. About the numbness, the desperate search for real emotional connections.

It seems like everyone I've known who partied like that was trying to slap a patch on genuine problems.

99% of people i've known who party like that do so because they are genuine hedonists

i agree with you about the numbness of LDR though. i think it's less to do with partying in her case and more to do with neediness, with the desire to please - that's the drug in her case. those people whose permanent need to be in a relationship or to be loved by someone seems to mask a discomfort about only having themselves for company

Cleverest thing she could do now: kill off LDR at the end of the year and came back with a completely different name and style. A new identity every two years.

i was totally thinking that the other day! it makes sense, if the whole LDR thing is a character or a project, how much mileage can there be in it anyway? can you sustain a character experiment over a whole career?

i was also wondering how the whole project would have been received if LDR was a girl group (following up some thoughts in some other thread about how many girl groups seem to be vehicles for woman to say certain things, play certain roles and dabble in certain archetypes that they might not feel able to as solo artists)

I think you're probably right about the Lana character, Lex.

Lots of lyrics about loving "you" forever, until the day I die, etc.

Which seem a little bit more chilling than they would in a normal pop context, and I come at Video Games as being a narrative of a woman who has that need for a relationship being trapped with a man who's emotionally immature. Seems pretty true to life to me.

And every homeless drunk is a hedonist, just without the glamour.

wasn't her music pretty much the same as lizzy grant? seems like this is pretty much her one big idea/aesthetic and just because people play up the 'character' aspect of it doesn't mean she's got a david bowie bag of personas.

idk why anyone is bothered by how much anyone sells

well it's a rough guide as to how many people are listening to her, which in this case seems to be quite a lot! on this little island, at least.

idk why lex is bothered by how much anyone talks about how much anyone sells

wasn't her music pretty much the same as lizzy grant?

the david kahne album was more straightforward, with generally less bland lyrics and way less produced. it almost sounds like a more mature album on the whole.

ok i mean i haven't heard the earlier stuff i was just going off that blockhead piece where he talked about working with her before and how that whole aesthetic was fully formed before the name change

was just doing a search on amazon for books about "grant making," this was the first result:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51LVXN2nnfL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-34,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

ebook seo spam, what a world

lightening

are they saying she's passing?

LDR is sooooooo january.

i was totally thinking that the other day! it makes sense, if the whole LDR thing is a character or a project, how much mileage can there be in it anyway? can you sustain a character experiment over a whole career?

Now I'm trying to think of an Andrew WK parallel.

this might me break my moratorium on linking to LDR pieces on twitter

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2012/02/07/i-sing-video-games-for-the-fourteen-year-old-girl-i-once-was/

More than anything, I am perplexed at the sheer volume of words LDR has thus far begat.

Another dude says she kind of wants to sound like the music Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch wrote for Twin Peaks. While I amuse myself with dudes who disapprove, I am alarmed by this one comparison. Because our culture is already rife with instances of young girls abused, raped and murdered, like Laura Palmer was in Lynch’s series. Is that the kind of fantasy Lana Del Rey evokes in these dudes? Is this the scenery she inspires?

Maybe because it's the scenery she explicitly references in her music, lyrics, photo shoots and interviews?

hey guys i have this cool idea i'd like to base my art on. something in suburbia is..... ROTTEN and TWISTED. like you think everything's all perfect, but under the surface it's not! in reality the "perfect" families lead numbing, rote lives - imagine a long shot of a lawn sprinkler, just spricketing away, untended. and there's a dead body on the lawn! how long has it been there?? who knows! maybe the guy's just sleeping, like eventually he wakes up and walks away, drenched. because in suburbia there's no difference between life and death! that would be the messages of that shot. plus, no one in suburbia communicates! even if the guy WAS dead, no one would even notice. cause they're hollow inside. i'm gonna go to the big city. get the first bus out of town. i can't stand this place! you have to come with me or you'll break my heart. come with me. come with me and we can make a movie together about this place.

or, as you put it more succintly earlier:

Raymond Carver pop? though maybe Cheever has a place therein as well.

i actually don't hear any julee cruise or badalamenti in the album at all, i think that influence is grossly overstated.

It's more Twin Peaks itself than the soundtrack imo. There's a lyric about a girl tying a knot in a cherry stalk with her tongue like Audrey Horne. And she's talked about how much she's inspired by the scene in Fire Walk With Me where Laura Palmer's dancing at the roadhouse.

xp lol Tracer

yeah, i think it's that she's creating an image of the female that's very similar to those that david lynch created over the years, esp in twin peaks: self-negating, consumed by weirdly disempowering passions, offering herself for use by those who will treat her badly. and the look, the retro glam signifiers, passive torch songs, femininity not as fully integrated personhood, but as a collection of desirable attributes.

BREAKING NEWS:

Amoeba is truly sorry for photo restrictions at Lana's signing today, however this is what Lana's management has requested.

from the nose up and from the chin down only

autographed 8x10s of The Lips available at the register

All of this is so weird

On the plus side, though, who says there's no monoculture?

every other person on this board. seriously, don't get them started.

was just watching last weekend's SNL and this was pretty prescient btw:

the box cutter killer from the calcutta gutter (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ) wrote this on thread Saturday Night Live on board I Love Everything on Jan 15, 2012

Lana Del Rey is a Kristen Wiig character, right?

Don't give Wiig any ideas bro

Because I dont think any of us are ready for that to become a deathless SNL bit

no i'm saying, it already is, on last week's Weekend Update

Coming to Hackney this summer...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/hackneyweekend/2012/artists/lanadelrey/

Because she's a fashion icon or something.

we get the fashion icons we deserve

she does good interview

No instruments on video games? Hmm ok. I guess it makes sense in the alternate universe where a four and a half minute ballad is somehow shattering the rules of pop music.

she's gonna be on the cover of issue #4 of Lovecat (paz, lohan, & cindy crawford were the 1st three)

smoking Pall Mall Blues that share space — in a beat-up snakeskin bag — with an old Tennessee Williams paperback

You can't fault her commitment