Nick Bollinger dissects the latest set of doomed dream-pop from Lana Del Rey.
Lana Del Rey is the kind of pop star someone would have had to i
nvent, if she hadn’t come along and invented herself. And that invention is fully-formed, if showing its ultimate limitations, on her fourth and latest album. The persona is the same one most of us were first introduced to in the 2011 hit ‘Video Games’ and the Born To Die album that followed closely on its heels: sweet but not so innocent, vulnerable, fallible and fatally attracted to danger. It is a composite of American archetypes, mostly taken from the movies. There’s a bit of Marilyn Monroe, for sure, and the teenage runaway Sissy Spacek played in Terrence Malik’s Badlands, with a slew of David Lynch creations thrown in. And that picture of doomed romance is underscored by a music that never rises above the tempo of a sleepwalk; that shivers and shimmers like some ghostly jukebox that only plays tortured torch divas. Honeymoon may be something of a one-mood album, but it certainly nails that mood. And while it doesn’t have a song with quite the universal appeal of ‘Video Games’, the songs are – within the narrow emotional boundaries Del Rey has drawn for them – pretty good, and Rick Nowels, songwriting gun-for-hire and Del Rey’s main collaborator here, has polished up the melodies so they shine – even through the narcotised haze.
Songs played: God Knows I Tried, Music To Watch Boys To, High By The Beach, Art Deco, Terrence Loves You, Honeymoon
