Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over The Country Club (2021)

alternate cover looks like she shot out just out of frame of this

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LNX-E07tXM8/maxresdefault.jpg

*shot it

Arrangement-wise it reminds me of the White Album or something.

Been thinking about how classic the arrangements are: Beatles, 3rd-album Velvets, "White Dress" gives me Laura Nyro vibes kinda. Maybe I don't get out enough but it feels kind of surprising in 2021?

I don't know, I think it's pretty in tune with 2021. Jack Antonoff just won album of the year with Taylor Swift, and the sonic palette is partly him.

“it's weird that she doesn't care about the album artwork when she seems to care very much about the visuals for her videos etc” true and I don’t k ow how truthful that statement was but it seeems to explain some of the tossed off nature of some of them.

Also important to note that there were videos she made (like video games) and videos that I’m sure were 100% other peoples ideas (like Born to Die). The video for Chemtrails is interesting because it seems like the former style until near the end when it turns into a vampire video out of the blue (and even that owes something to Bat for Lashes)

xp yeah listening again a lot of the arrangement is of a piece with the Taylor albums, what's interesting to me are the aesthetic choices that don't fit (Beatles outro in "Dark But Just a Game", VU guitar in "Not All That Wander Are Lost", I swear there's Nyro in "White Dress" but I don't hear it every time)

Tonight at a small country bar in South Austin, we saw @nikkilanemusic. She brought Ms. @LanaDelRey out to duet "Breaking Up Slowly" and then Nikki covered @rosannecash "Seven Year Ache." For our 1st live show in 13 months, it was a transcendent one-two punch of joy. pic.twitter.com/5GYojQDkAB

— MattShiv (@shivvy) April 5, 2021

Another on the way: https://variety.com/2021/music/news/lana-del-rey-new-album-blue-banisters-1234962009/

no surprise that she changed the title for it but given her history i doubt this will make that release date

oh reading up on it and people think this might be a separate project to rock candy sweet bc she mentioned having two more albums in the work not too long ago (one possibly a country covers album?)

If that font is not already on bistro menus everywhere, it will be.

truly, the stans will eat what they're given

I sort of get the impression she's not a fan of the traditional album/release schedule she's always been on (where the usual allowances are made for vinyl manufacturing etc) and might be hopping over to a more modern approach (aka "release as much whenever you can") which...I don't know, maybe it will result in more spontaneous/less "safe" material, but quality control is a real concern lol

Maybe she's guided by voices?

i feel like she's always announcing projects that inevitably get themselves delayed into more traditional release schedules

yeah it feels like once per cycle she gets a text from the same label guy to be like "what did we say about timetables lana"

I can't help but find her apathy/indifference about visual aesthetics sort of charming, like she's developed an early case of old man swag

Her album covers are the aural equivalent of thinking crocs with socks and a bathrobe is an acceptable attire to wear in public.

three new singles just showed up on streaming services: "text book", "wildflower wildfire", "blue banisters"

lol that they're all separate releases, her people really have no savvy about how to juice streaming stats

surprisingly the mike dean one is the least distinctive. she's improving as a singer. someone destroy her piano.

"Dark But Just a Game" shows how much she can do as a melodist when someone gives her a harmonically interesting structure with some key changes. Otherwise, I have to roll my eyes when two consecutive songs on this record ("Let Me Love You Like a Woman" and "Wild at Heart") begin with the same IV - I - V chord progression* played at the same tempo.

* If you're generous, you could say that "Wild at Heart" is actually a ♭VII - IV - I in light of the subsequent verse, but off the top it's the same progression.

Let the record show that Blue Banisters was not released last week.

Nice new song :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mECX60FVJQ

And a great beat at the end of the video !

Yeah I dig that coda (?) though sounds more like an interlude that will work great in the full album context.

that outro nearly rattled the decorative plates off my shelf

album is out in October.

oh damn i had only heard the version on Spotify and it doesn't have that extra bit at the end.

She's terrible.

Had to turn this off after the first verse. Words were bad, very bad words.

I don't hate her but man every song the past 5 yrs is the same tempo, mood, delivery. Coda here is morricone sample + generic trap beat.

Well (good/great) sample + (good / great) beat is a fine formula imo. This one works well !

Agreed that her latest releases lack diversity in arrangements/production. I loved NFR, some tracks from Chemtrails but the first fews tracks from Blue Banisters don’t do much for me.
I like this one though but I’d like a return to some HipHop beats and other directions.

She’s on such a roll; the last two albums have had some of her very best work, certainly since her first album. This very tasty re-edit/extended mix of Tulsa Jesus Freak is one of the top few things to ever bear her voice IMO. The spoken stuff being given room to breathe is particularly delicious..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OkwRXxKmT8

I saw a YouTube video a few weeks ago of her covering "Wicked Game" at the Hollywood Bowl with Chris Isaak as a special guest, and suddenly it clicked how much that song feels at the root of much of what she does. He certainly embodies the "do one thing well and don't mess too much with it" philosophy. Would like to hear them cover each other's songs.

She’s on such a roll; the last two albums have had some of her very best work, certainly since her first album. This very tasty re-edit/extended mix of Tulsa Jesus Freak is one of the top few things to ever bear her voice IMO. The spoken stuff being given room to breathe is particularly delicious..

📹

She has deleted basically her entire social media presence; I can't say I blame her, if every single thing I posted was just replied to by thousands of bot-sounding weirdo stan accounts spouting fucking gibberish. But surprising thing to do weeks before an album launch.

A couple of weeks ago a friend posited that "White Dress" was the single of the year and I definitely think it's one of the most daring album openers I've ever come across (also yes I do love it)

new album is ok but probably a step down from the last two on first listen

some good tracks but the album is too long yet again & she spends too much time in her most boring languid piano ballad mode. "black bathing suit" is really good at least

Yeah, I have the same first impressions. I like "Thunder" and "Dealer" is fun !

if you cut it down it'd probably be solid enough

the morricone trap remix interlude is pretty goofy & out of place

eheh, yeah it's a great break in the album.
"Sweet Carolina" is also pretty... sweet =

I think it's a good album but wasn't surprised to learn it's kind of an assemblage of older stuff (I had no idea she recorded a whole album with Last of the Shadow Puppets that went unreleased or unfinished). Dealer is the highlight to me, never heard her wail like that. Black Bathing Suit is good but I don't know if I'm sold on the mix at the end of the song; I feel like it attempts to do a Venice Bitch but it's not hitting the mark the way Antonoff would mix it. Anyway, interesting that she deleted all her social media presence earlier this summer, wonder what that will do to sales (not that I think she cares).

i thought i disliked dealer until i realized it was stuck in my head all day

it's not unusual for her outtakes from sessions for previous albums to reappear on later records (usually having been leaked online long beforehand) but there's a lot more on this one than usual yeah

"cherry blossom", "nectar of the gods", "if you lie down with me" and "living legends" are all ultraviolence outtakes, though idk if they're totally unchanged since then or if she's re-recorded them. "dealer" and "thunder" are from 2017 sessions with some of last shadow puppets (but not all, haven't seen any mention of alex turner being involved), & "dealer" is confirmed to be unchanged from those sessions but idk about "thunder".

gave this some more listens & there aren't any outright duds on this but it rarely comes even close to her best work. there are a few interesting moments at least ("black bathing suit", "beautiful", "dealer") but overall the stripped down mode she's mostly working in gets pretty dull across the course of the entire (too long) album. comparing it to chemtrails, it's just not anywhere near as melodically strong & the arrangements are lacking.

would rank it somewhere around the middle of her albums

Yup. I guess 2 albums in the year, following a great album in 2019 is a bit much. Like these 2 albums cut down into one would have been a great follow up to NFR!

i know i'm in the minority here but i think chemtrails is her best. there's not really anything on the new one that i would have liked to have had on chemtrails, the tracks i am fond of here wouldn't have really fit too well.

nfr! was decent but its reputation already seems ridiculous to me. it leads with a few great tracks before spending most of the album just being fine - this was certainly a victory considering how inconsistent most of her past work had been but chemtrails improves upon it, much more consistently reaching nfr's highs & being a reasonable length for once.

My first listen of "Dealer", I thought "this is the kind of music I'd imagine Karen Black making". I googled "lana del rey" "karen black" and there was only one prior comparison, written by a Grantland writer, saying "if Lana Del Rey doesn't love [Five Easy Pieces'] Rayette Dipesto, I'll eat my makeup." Then I searched for Karen Black recordings, having only heard "Dreams Come True Girl" with Cass McCombs, and discovered that Cass finished and released a posthumous Karen Black album just a few months ago. I'm listening to it now and it doesn't sound anything like "Dealer". Sounds good though!

Really love the horns that come in on "If You Lie Down With Me"