Culch.ie

Album Review: Lana Del Rey – Born To Die

I genuinely wanted to like Born To Die. I knew I’d never love it, because the charm of Video Games, Lana Del Rey’s breakthrough hit, was largely lost on me, but I hoped with Born To Die there would be enough substance underneath the style for me to connect with. There wasn’t. Still, I thought I should be measured about the whole thing, that I shouldn’t indulge my disappointment and instead write a professional, thoughtful album review. I don’t want to take the side of those depressingly predictable Lana haters, after all.

On the other hand, one really should be honest with one’s album reviews; it’s an obligation I can’t in good faith run away from. So to honour my place as a sensible critic and placate my sense of critical honour, I’m going to give you two reviews of 2012’s most anticipated album. The first is basically my Lana-notes, unedited, as scribbled. The second is me being measured and moderate. I’m a hard-workin’ hardass like that.

Gonzo Del Rey: The Real-Time Notes of a Frustrated Curmudgeon

Blue Jeans: A stoned Rihanna. Or a less inventive Portishead. I don’t see the point so far.

Born To Die: I want to slap her. Open your mouth, woman! Drawly, tuneless yawnfest. What is this? Sexy chillout music? Do something different!

Carmen is slightly more interesting. Sounds like a bellydance goin’ down at the other end of some cavernous space. Lana still reminds me of someone who read Go Ask Alice while masturbating. Song is 4 minutes long and it felt like 10.

God this is so fucking drawly and sprawly. Don’t get Lana wrong, kids. She’s just a good-looking shoegazer. This is a slog.

Dark Paradise: Blah blah blah blah. Pretty distraction? Oh, I think this one has a chorus. It’s like gorgeous whinging. “Oh, love is sooo hard. You’re so great. I’m going to kill myself.”

If this was an Irish artist, would I be so meh? Oh God, I would.

Diet Mountain Dew: ZOMG, a beat. A stripped-down beat, but… yeah, a beat about as inventive as gravel. God, I’m bored.

Who ordered chill-hop shoegaze? This seems so specialist.

Lolita: Ooh, a chant. That’s novel. I mean, that’s novel for this album. I don’t get the Lolita thing. She’s talking about a promiscuous twelve-year-old? Weird. Also the infant-cute vocals? What? Why do all these songs sound ten minutes longer than they are?

Lucky Ones: Bit of plaintive Abba there at the start, but doubtless it’ll wander into Shittown soon. Oh no, hold on, this is kind of sweet. It’s much less poseur-y, too. This is nice and delicate. Well done, Lana. You’ve got a song going on here.

Million Dollar Man: She’s going for the Bond theme here. Chipmunk lounge music.

National Anthem: Didn’t this play earlier? LOL. She channelled Holly Valance.

Off To The Races: Ok, she definitely played this earlier. Hey, there’s a chorus though. Hooray! This album is like a list of locations where one can kiss Lana. Races is probably the catchiest song on the album so far, but that’s like saying Dove is the catchiest bar of soap in the shower.

Radio: Sweet hip-hop flavoured chillgaze. Is that a genre? I’ve been looking for choruses and now I get nothing but repetition.

Summertime Sadness: Same old, same old. Now I have Teh Bummertime Sadnezz.

This is just mood music. It’s all about recreating moods, not inspiring them. It feels hollow and not authentic, manipulative without any desire to mask it. Lana Del Rey doesn’t feel like a real person. I know nothing about her. Where is she? What is she? There is no one here to connect to. She’s a replicator, not an originator.

This Is What Makes Us Girls: God, this is repetitive. She’s fucking boring. Vocals, beats, themes, melodies, construct. All the motherfucking same. This Is What Makes Us Girls is the epitome of this. Wah wah boys boys drinking kissing wah wah. Tuneless. Or if there is a tune, it’s one she already delivered earlier in the album.

Video Games: Will this be diluted by all the wah-wah before? Yes. Yes it is. Diminished as fuck because I’ve just heard a million hours of wah before it came around. This is painful. How did we ever like this slushy claptrap?

Without You: Thank Christ. The last song. Lana deigns to do a little soaring. Way better than Video Games, but it’s still not a good song. Not by a long shot.

There isn’t a single thing Lana does well that another band/musician doesn’t do better. She’s like Jarvis Cocker as played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Lana Del Seriously: Not-At-All-Gonzo Ponderings

There’s a song by the Chemical Brothers, which appears on their album Push The Button, called Hold Tight London. It’s a stunning combination of relentless beat progression and dreamy, drawling, otherworldly vocals. It’s mood music par excellence, beautiful and evocative and exciting. I thought of it a number of times while listening to Born To Die, because it felt to me like Hold Tight London was the epitome of what Lana Del Rey was going for, but never actually accomplished.

Born To Die is gorgeous. I doubt anyone could deny that. It’s full of delicate chill-hop, urban sensibilities draped in gauze and delivered by a very skilful vocalist who is capable of shifting deftly from throaty come-on to fragile plea. The problem with Born To Die isn’t that it doesn’t do exactly what it says on the proverbial tin (vintage, possibly with a glamour girl transfer on the metal); it’s that it doesn’t get anywhere near the heights projected by the hype. It’s quite perplexing, really. Born To Die is full of almost tuneless elegance, lyrics espousing romantic neediness and sartorially-acceptable retrobellion; it is not something I would have thought suitable for mass consumption. I can’t see pop tarts in love with Beyoncé’s feistiness, Adele’s lungpower or Amy Winehouse’s unsettling candour taking to Lana Del Rey. I can’t see trendsetters being patient enough to deal with the empty cynicism of this forced nostalgic glamour. Who is this album for? People who want to steam up the windscreens of classic cars and come down afterwards on straight gin and cigars? I have no idea.

Perplexing in its intentions or not, the fact remains that Born To Die is startlingly un-fun, not so much po-faced as pout-faced, a mood-delivery system rather than an artistic expression. It’s a lesson in propping aesthetics on a flimsy foundation and passing the package off as something aspirational, meaningful, worthy. Lana Del Rey has nothing to say. Her mix of sultry vocals and rose-tinted reminiscence is as good a lifestyle product as any, but this ain’t where I go when I think of music.