Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019)

.. oops

MOJO piece is really good.

I'll pick up a copy to look at next time I'm passing a newsstand or idling in a bookshop

oh wait

MOJO

.. oops

MOJO NIXON collab is really good.

She's the washboard player he needed ever since Skid Roper left.

acc to their review, Weyes Blood sings on the Joni cover.

new album leaked and only listened to first track so far but wow at it

"tulsa jesus freak" is wild, it has this tiny bit of autotune on the vocals that makes it sound haunted, really fantastic atmosphere

album is the folkiest thing she's done, feels like a natural continuation of the first three tracks or so from NFR. pleasantly surprised

antonoff has really outdone himself with the production & arrangements here

"dance till we die" is really something

i think this is solidly her best, it doesn't reach the same peaks as say, "mariners apartment complex" and "venice bitch" but it's way more consistent overall. "let me love you like a woman" is probably the weakest track, i get why it was the lead single but really not too representative.

and the title track is much better in context too

she finally made an album that is good all the way through and isn't 20 minutes too long for its own good!

About to listen - sounds like Ultraviolence structurally which I am so down for

"white dress" namechecjs sun ra and kings of leon, she has truly gone mad with power

who's that singing on "breaking up slowly"?

"white dress", "tulsa jesus freak", "dark but just a game" and "dance till we die" seem to be the highlights. super low key even by her standards. it does *sound* great. I just really need her to ditch the piano on the next one.

also feels much less emotionally turbulent than NFR!, I suspect lots of quarantine meditation

I suspect lots of quarantine medication

i read the lyrics to white dress and hahahahhahaha no

somewhat ironically brad I listened to that one and wondered aloud "is this a coded message to taylor"

this album is the most aggressively uncommercial thing she's released so far.

this album is the most aggressively uncommercial thing she's released so far.

The last album had a nine-and-a-half-minute song, fully half of which was an extended synth solo. It also had "fucking" in its title.

yeah but it also had that sublime cover the label made her include so it would have a radio hit

(that's not to knock it, i really like that cover, but it kind of messes up the flow of the record)

arguably this is still very commercial, her demo has just changed definitively to Mojo readers

she has fully embraced her inner boomer

At her first run of gigs proper (i saw her first ever show weirdly enough) the audience was *very* Mojo; a pretty polite, sedate vibe, she'd been getting a lot of play on BBC6 etc. It was only later on that the first 10 rows became screaming teens.

she's always had that thing that billie eilish does too, at least based on Facebook, where guys my age post about it and say "I usually don't like pop music but this is good"

well like "video games" initially blew up with the indie music press and then she soon crossed over to a mainstream pop audience from there but never fully committed to chasing it long-term so she's just settled with a decent cult following

Have the screaming teens stayed her fans (or been replaced by newer screaming teens), or have they moved on to younger stars?

I saw her on the NFR tour and it was a more sedate crowd all around than when I saw her several years ago (at the Shoreline) where it was 98% screaming girls with interesting eyeliner and hesitation marks.

is that baez on 'for free'?

that's weyes blood

ah. great baez impression then

This album is amazing when high

also a million lols at 'the men in music business conference'

I think the whole lyric is pretty great tbh, and I like those moments on the album where she tries to cram in as many syllables as possible. there's gotta be honesty in there because who would lie about jamming out to kings of leon

that song is a great character study that treats it's subject with equal scorn and empathy

also: fucking jack antanoff. this guy is probably my favorite working producer now (neck and neck with inflo). funny because his own music does nothing for me, but every other album he works on sounds amazing.

Is she using more falsetto than normal? I find it wearying.

mainly on the opener iirc?

i like the raspy thing she does on it

Yeah I love the way she sings the word "OrLANdo" on that song

Falsetto's all over the album.

It's only really grating on the first track, though. I almost bailed out.

there is a lot of falsetto but most of it is layered, multi-tracked vocals, which she hasn't done quite to this extent before. I like it.

it's weird that she repurposes so much of "how to disappear" for "wild at heart" but i think "wild at heart" ends up being an improvement?

Like, wow Tulsa Jesus Freak; comfortably in her top few songs ever list.

I'm stuck on the title track, which I managed to not hear until now. It's really amazing. I wish the video for it werent so cheesy

does she have any music videos that aren't really?