Blue Banisters

Released

Lana Del Rey has always been adept at the key trick of modern pop songwriting, which is mingling the autobiographical and the archetypal into lines that sound personal thanks to the accretion of concretizing detail, but ultimately retains enough universality that the emotionally vulnerable listener can hear themselves in it. When she drops these exquisitely crafted and yet naïve-sounding lyrics into the lush arrangements her chosen producers, most notably Jack Antonoff, favor, the effect can be dizzying. Blue Banisters features some of her most personal-feeling lyrics, and the songs — all slow ballads, half of them drumless — are some of the most beautiful in her catalog, featuring elaborate string arrangements and sudden, florid horn fanfares, occasionally augmented by a female chorus straight from the 1970s Elvis Presley catalog. And Del Rey’s own vocals are some of her clearest and purest; the drunk-girl murmuring and the widdle-baby-girl voice are gone. “Arcadia” is an astonishing performance, epic and grandiose but as intimate as a whisper.

Phil Freeman

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