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

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"

Yes it's a nice touch. And it resonates with the Trap Morricone bit.
At this point there are about 10 tracks that I like a lot on this album.

10 tracks probably would’ve been the ideal length for this album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYqky795R1s

well this is the most interesting thing she's done in a while, idk if it really works though

This interview was intermittently interesting.

EILISH: I’m really curious, and you can feel free to say fuck off, but you are so romanticized online, specifically different eras of you and your music and your visuals. You were always the coolest of the cool in my world, but I was wondering if having older versions of yourself romanticized later in life might give you this feeling of, “When I was doing that, you guys did not give me that same validation and gratification.”

DEL REY: Yes. I was thinking about this last night actually, if it’s better to be initiated into that club where it’s like, “She’s wonderful,” right away. Once things grew on YouTube, I expected that there was going to be this very niche lane where I knew that I could thrive, but it didn’t really go that way. I quickly shifted right into the middle lane where everyone could see it and could hear the music. As soon as that happened, I knew I was in for it, but I didn’t know to what extent. In the beginning, I was following the mantra: “It’s all about how you feel, not about what other people think.” I had never thought that one day Bruce Springsteen would say something like, “I think she’s one of the most beautiful American songwriters” after Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Change your name, change your face, and try a new career,” and Jon Caramanica was going off about whatever—this was in The New Yorker and New York magazine, and I lived in New York. All of a sudden, I was walking down the street as I always did, and people would throw elbows at me. I was like, “Oh my god, no way did that actually happen. Someone recognized me and gave me a shove.” Or in San Francisco, I was eating at a bistro and a woman threw a book about feminism at my face. I thought I was completely in for it. I thought that all I could do was just keep touring. So, I toured for nine years and kept my head down. I didn’t think anything could ever get elevated to the point where, for instance, Interview magazine would say, “You’re on the cover.” Even still, it’s like, “Really?”

I’d love to see the article in which SFJ said anything like that about her. The only NYer piece about her that I can recall from those days is https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/02/06/screen-shot

Misremembering or self mythologizing, either way, A&W is the most interesting thing she’s done in a while, and on that level it works great for me, but I agree w/ ufo, no idea if it works-works.

Hm, that's funny, I don't see "But anyway I misread something Ann Powers said once and essentially sicced my fans on her" in that paragraph.

Eilish couldn't have tiptoed more deferentially into that question.

The whole piece is "Lana Del Rey fawned over by a teenage fan."

I‘ve liked both these new tracks (shocking). I agree the new one may not quite “work,” but it keeps me listening. The transition/breakdown bit reminds me of that Lorde track “Hard Feelings/Loveless”…

“You can really hear the Antonoff!”

https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/oh-hello-nick-kroll-john-mulaney-620x400.jpeg

I find myself in the disorienting position of highly anticipating a Lana Del Rey album

after Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Change your name, change your face, and try a new career,” and Jon Caramanica was going off about whatever

…Maybe she was thinking of the closing lines from this (weird) Caramanica piece that I just came across, and was misremembering it as SFJ?:

A career founded on bad faith all around can’t be long for this world, but at this point what can Ms. Del Rey do? Not much. Her cultural stamp has already been affixed, her biography written in concrete. The only real option is to wash off that face paint, muss up that hair and try again in a few years. There are so many more names out there for the choosing.

i feel like there was a terrible SFJ piece on LDR at some point but maybe that's just something that really seems like it should be true but isn't? idk