Lust for Life

Released

Lana Del Rey’s fourth album (or fifth, or sixth, depending how you count the Paradise EP or her self-titled indie disc) sounds dazed and tranquil. Her voice floats past like a cross between Julee Cruise and Hope Sandoval, too dazed and dreamy to do much more than murmur the lyrics through a filter of smoke. The drums, a mix of booming bass and ticking trap hi-hats, sound like they’re coming from the bottom of a pool. Most of the guest vocalists — A$AP Rocky, Stevie Nicks, the Weeknd — materialize in the fog she’s conjured, then disappear again, leaving no impression. The one who really sticks out is Sean Ono Lennon, who pops up on “Tomorrow Never Came,” crooning over a Pink Floyd-ish acoustic guitar melody in deliberate, cruel imitation of his father. Del Rey’s lyrics are often bizarre, dealing in American iconography and romantic myth but in a perverse or even alien way. She is a keen observer, but even when she uses the first person singular she is never truly of the world she describes. This isn’t an ideal starting point for her work, but it’s such a bizarrely dreamlike album that it almost feels hallucinatory, the musical equivalent of lying in the baking hot sun after a decadent, gluttonous meal.

Phil Freeman