Peep our Norman Fucking Rockwell Rhyme Review below.
Lana Del Rey has returned with her new album Norman Fucking Rockwell.
Lana first appeared with her seminal single “Video Games” in 2011, the song became a cultural moment in music and popular culture and one of the most unique voices in music was born.
On her first album Born to Die, Lana unified stories of melancholy, drug use, eroticism and longing with our subconscious relationship to the simulacra of popular US culture and film noir, evoking the classic actresses from the 1940’s and 1950’s such as Cyd Charisse and Rita Hayworth. Charisse herself appeared in a movie called The Girl Hunt Ballet from 1953 which mocked the stereotype of the ubiquitous femme fatale of that era. In a similar way, Lana’s own lyrics created her own iconography whilst both endorsing and subverting the archetypal stylistic wanderings of feminine tropes. Lana and producers Justin Parker, Emilie Haynie and Rick Nowels informed Lana with a postmodern sensibility while also embodying the past.
Lana’s second album Ultraviolence represented a shift in the production style of her first album but also still offered the same lyrical sensibilities as her first. Producer Dan Auerbach helped layer the musical shift in Lana’s sound whilst she continued to both embrace and snigger at stereotypes on songs like “Brooklyn Baby”.
On her next two albums, Honeymoon and its follow up Lust for Life, Lana unified allusions to the entirety of the American songbook with jazz, blues, hip hop, and rock. On Honeymoon, Lana brought back Nowels and crafted an immaculately crafted record. On the song Salvatore she managed to answer the hypothesis of what her creativity stood for as she sings of: ‘beatboxing and rapping in the summer rain, like a boss who sang Jazz and Blues’.
One of her greatest skills is to bring together musical and thematic styles whilst having a distinct understanding of where black musical culture slots into US music and popular culture and never treating black culture as something that is a pejorative ready to be exploited then thrown away. She understands how culture is fluid and pollinates every aspect of musical genesis. The fact she can bring Sugarhill Gang references into a song about a pretentious lover with effortless grace is akin to not only the popular culture references in hip hop but also the huge emotional scale of her David Lynch stylings.
Lust for Life meanwhile is the only album aside from Ultraviolence in which guest vocalists feature on the record. The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, Sean Lennon and Stevie Nicks feature here on an album that offered a silent reflection on the paradigm of a country which is creatively wondrous but on the precipice of a political descent into the same monolithic sadness she referenced on her earlier albums. This album also brought together her long term collaborators Haynie and Nowels.
Lana is one of the greatest musicians of my generation, I was lucky to see her perform in London at smaller venue and she was totemically mesmerising. I love the lavish nature of her musical sensibility coupled with the emotionality and sensuality of her music which is all layered within the culture of one of the most creatively wondrous countries in the west. Also visually she has created some of the greatest music videos of all time.
All of this brings me to her new album which is one of the best collections of music I have heard this year.
Named after the artist Norman Rockwell, the author and illustrator whose illustrations chronicled Presidents over the timeline of American culture. His most iconic illustration to me was called The Problem We All Live which depicted a young black girl named Ruby Bridges flanked by US Marshalls on her way to school in Louisiana during 1960. The painting would feature on the wall of the Whitehouse when Bridges met President Barack Obama on July 15th 2011.
Rockwell’s work was written off by the intelligentsia for many years until his visual chronicles were given credit in later years. It is ironic that this album is named for him by an artist who herself has been written off as a derivative caricature by some music critics.
This album is mainly produced by Jack Antonoff who is a producer whose work I have struggled to enjoy despite him working with some of my favourite artists.
Here though he has helped Lana to create a thoughtful record in which every record here feels like the conclusion of an endless summer spent with a seasonal romance during your last dance with that person. Except here it also feels like the last dance could be with the spirit of what her home country should embody with a last embrace.
The album moves away from the red rose like passion of her previous albums and feels like the soft touch of a daffodil. The glory of the record is that marries her new sensibility with the lyrically luxurious beauty and emotions of her previous albums.
The beautiful guitars and soft drums of first single “Venice Bitch” are stunning and perfectly bring a spring to a song that is almost ten minutes in length. This softer vibe is continued with the strings, subtle drum taps and piano of the title track. “Fuck it I love you” is simplistically wondrous in it’s conception.
Del Rey and Antanoff craft songs that hold huge weight and gravitas but the arrangements are so meticulous and intricate that I still found myself crying at inopportune moments as I listened to this on my 12 inch vinyl player. “Love Song” and “How to disappear” have melodies that feel like a ticking clock as time wears down on your heart.
“Cinnamon Girl” is the most up-tempo song on the album and also my favorite. Again it is paradoxically subtle and yet grandiose, both vocally and sonically.
Producer Rick Nowels produces “Bartender” in which Lana sings of Cherry Coke as served by a man who she is as sweet on as the calories in the drink.
Nowels appears again “The Next Best American Record” which is a song which explodes from small guitars into drums, the song also alludes to the beauty of the creative mind and where that must interact with the autonomy of writing; but also with the collective sense that you cannot create art without the dependence of human interaction and vulnerability.
The cover of the sublime song “Doin Time” brings together both California (a passion of hers) and the musical history she is so aware of. This love of California is brought back again directly on the song “California”.
“Mariners Apartment Complex” is introduced with references to other musicians, this whole album is full of lovely lyrical asides to other songs, popular culture, sex and romance.
“The Greatest” brings the most retro feel on the entire album. Which is ironic on a song about saying goodbye to a culture and a country that may perish. In the video for the song Lana looks over a jukebox which contains old and new singers. The song looks back on musical Americana with a sense of sadness and breaks the silence of the future with the loss of the past and those who once inspired us.
Album closer “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it” beautifully closes the album on a hopeful note. The song references the writer Sylvia Plath who committed suicide but Lana imbues the song with hope for future loves. The song also suggests we can’t hope for a better future for ourselves without understanding the crosses we carry and why.
This album is one of the best of this year and the decade. Lana Del Rey is inimitable and she is one of the most prodigious songwriters in the musical history of an America she knows and loves so well. Like this album I hope it feels like the last kiss rather than the beginning of the end.
Editor’s Score: 10/10
Words by @Theghostwriterc
