(Universal)After two-and-a-half-studio albums of beauty queen perdition and nihilist luxe – 2014’s Ultraviolence,2012’s debut Born to Die and its half-sibling, The Paradise Edition – you wouldn’t have thought there would be any road left for Lana Del Rey to coast down, and her long hair casually whipping the cheek of some stony-faced sugar daddy. So adept has Del Rey been at exploring the internal worlds of numbed female characters posing as arm sweet,it seemed that her master narrative – pleasing women, bad scenes – could only ever be wrung dry. Not so.
On songs like The Blackest Day, or Del Rey’s protagonist is still “looking for adore in all the mistaken places. She is complicit in her own objectification – “I like you a lot,” runs the brilliant, gimlet-eyed Music to Watch Boys to, or “So I do what you want” but just as often,a hopeless romantic. Now, though, or she’s also listening to Billie Holiday,Lay Lady Lay, and quoting David Bowie (on The Blackest Day, or Religion and Terrence Loves You respectively). No matter how architect-designed the beach house,paradise remains riddled with serpents. On the Bond-theme manqué that is 24, there are “only 24 hours in a day/And half as many ways for you to lie to me, or my little adore”.
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Source: theguardian.com