Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019)

For me the Mazzy Star influence is pretty obvious, esp on Mariners and the title track, although LDR seems more interested in engaging with the times (like Joni) than a hazy classicist like Hope Sandoval.

About the middle part, I can understand why people might not like it since it's not as great, bright and varied as the first tracks of the album but to me that's he darkest and most moving part of the album.
From "Cinnamon" to "Bartender" (+ the final track), it's emotional punch after emotional punch.
"Love Song" and "Happiness" could be cut out, though.
Basically, I like to listen to the first part of the album in the morning/day and the second part in the evening/at night !

About the weird arrangements and drums, I love how frustrating AND satisfying it is that the beats only come in in the very last bars of "Cinnamon Girl".

Basically, I like to listen to the first part of the album in the morning/day and the second part in the evening/at night !

I like this division!

OK, I'm hearing the guitar now, there's just not much of it and it's there as window dressing.

I do not hear much hazy dream pop stuff on this album (which would have been pretty easy to achieve with the press of a button or pedal), but it's definitely sunlit dreamy-ish.

BTW, teenager test? She said it's "pretty" and "not like 'Summer Bummer.'"

Spouse test: "it's ... OK. Too much whispering."

"Happiness" is essential if only for the "Don't be a jerk/don't call me a taxi" bit

eheh, I haven't really focused on the lyrics yet (so the album still has a lot to give to me !).
As for the guitars, there are plenty ! I love all the guitar parts/solos in "Venice Bitch", for instance.
As an old Suede lover, this long instrumental jam part in "VB" reminds me of the long version of "Let's Stay Together"...
And to stay on Britpop references, there's a part in "Love Song" that reminds me of... Oasis' "Wonderwall" ! Maybe that's why I don't like it as much as the rest...

More precisely it's the "Love Song" part :
"It all comes down to make the sound of our love song"

which reminds me of the "Wonderwall" part :
"Would like to say to you but I don't know how"

That's the "Strawberry Fields Forever" part, right? More Lennon.

fuck it i luh yuh

yeah I loathe that particular affectation

or rather, i loa it

Got to say I’m with imago there, it ruins the song for me

I’m not sure clear diction was one of her goals on this !

I think it's the point that she doesn't say the word in that song, and comes closer to pronouncing "like," but can't actually commit even to that

loaife you

as someone who finds this album interesting & substantial but hardly above critique ... im finding lots of wild takes on both sides of the aisle lol

There are very few occasions where I wish I were still a profesh music critic but I would be very happy to have 2k words to repeat that LDR is hipster lib-centrist trash for the unbearably cynical who are very certain they are the exact opposite, she is basically Beto O'Rourke.

— Joshua Clover (@joshuaclov3r) September 4, 2019

damn.

I've just been calling it a reminder that pumpkin spice season came early this year.

Joshua Clover was an excellent writer and a person who looked like a bean sprout in black jeans who has become an awful troll.

the verso money got to him

also at some point he became friends w michael robbins

wouldn't call it cynical, but you can definitely hear the gears moving behind a lot of her lyrical and aesthetic decisions imo. that's not a problem, it was true of bowie too.

that dude has been trash for as long as I can remember.

Bowie’s a decent comparison tbh

Cynicism = bad faith; using scorn, sardonicism, etc to mask an essential sentimentality. She has flaws, but I never got that from LDR.

Bowie’s a decent comparison tbh

― omar little, Wednesday,

No it's not! Only briefly (1983-1987) did I think Bowie indulged in bad faith. So many of his strategies are to project beyond his physical ability to care like the soul singers he loves.

maybe cynical is the wrong word, or i don't define it that way.

Or, rather, I should say that LDR, Bowie, and Ferry have much in common but cynicism has fuck all to do with it.

Too often "cynical" means "bitter" or "sarcastic" when those words are consequences not ends.

i was thinking more as "a winking manipulation"--basically the knowledge that she has her audience and the press in the palm of her hand, and leaves them lyrical catnip.

Every cynic I know wishes the world were a better place, which only a fucking sentimentalist would believe.

I only agree with the Bowie comparison strictly artistically, not the cynicism!

i was thinking more as "a winking manipulation"--basically the knowledge that she has her audience and the press in the palm of her hand, and leaves them lyrical catnip.

― normal fucking rockman (voodoo chili),

Too many artists at their peak are too distracted to go for this five-dimensional chess. It's like accusing Trump of strategy.

Now waiting for Jane Dark's LDR Hot Take.

LDR on this album and elsewhere reminds me sometimes of early Bowie, not like exactly but in terms of a certain approach and a certain theatrical sentimentality that hits harder on record than it does on paper.

xxp

but some artists do this! even huge artists--lennon, bowie, taylor swift, etc. are hyper-aware that every word they say is going to be dissected and that definitely affects their songwriting.

lmao at the 'lib-centrist' criticism, it's not as if she's been pretending to make some marxist criticism of america this whole time

I'm not going to get into an argument about intentions, but for sixty years we've given pop artists way too much credit/blame for a calculation that has never gotten in the way of a dumb hook. If you wanna say that good dumb hooks get written or are stumbled on and the audiences fall into their hands, that's another thing; it's a different question from creating standard contract-filling albums.

Come on now. Bowie's lyrics were often literal nonsense — remember his fascination with Burroughsian "cut-ups." LDR's lyrics may be obvious at times (though they're more often sharper than she's given credit for, at least until this album when a lot of people seem to have suddenly discovered that she's smart), but even the obviousness is always intentional. Nothing is left to "chance" with her. Also, she's been playing the same character for almost a decade; Bowie never hung onto a persona for more than what, three years?

Clover created a tweet thread attacking the hippie-punching in OUATIH that made a couple good points but didn't acknowledge the white supremacist views of the Manson crew.

as a leftist I really REALLY wish leftists would stop trying to do hip contrarian pop culture takes for attention. they're almost always bullshit (see also basically any Jacobin pop culture piece)

my pussy tastes like praaaaaaaxis

i can't think of a culture-critic who more often seems to try to speak with wildly more critical authority than he actually has than clover.

Clover created a tweet thread attacking the hippie-punching in OUATIH

Couple of glasses of wine in, I read this as OU812.

Ann Powers's take: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/757545360/lana-del-rey-lives-in-americas-messy-subconscious

What’s that opening paragraph, some kind of cod Joan Didion?

yes

there was another review somewhere that explicitly drew a comparison between del rey and ...play it as it lays maybe? can't recall.

Piece is a little shaggy but has lots of individual observations I really like

She's good.

When’s someone gonna release a concept album about the San Fernando Valley? All we have is the Karate Kid soundtrack.