Lana Del Rey is a walking paradox. Since the release of her debut album a couple of years ago, she's effectively avoided boiler-plate celebrity, and instead, reached for something else entirely. She's become an icon. It was a near-impossible task, but she (or whoever is helping pull the strings behind her), has managed to turn her brand into something much more effective than what the average pop star has access to. Lana's whole existence within the entertainment industry has been meticulously maintained since day one, and for any outsider looking in (the fans), there's no real way to tell what's authentic, and what's been contrived for the sake of record sales. That's special. Freed from any sort of accountability to the masses, Lana's become amorphous, and she's used this liquidity to drift in between genres with impunity, making fans in almost every circle of the music world. Lana Del Rey is not the sultry-eyed, reticent, woman that graces the album cover before you. Lana Del Rey is a figure that was crafted to stand the test of time, and to appeal to the widest possible demographic. Elizabeth Woolridge Grant is simply the conduit by which this all was made accessible to you, the consumer. Despite all this lofty imagining, Lana's music almost always comes across as genuine and organic, amazingly enough. It's a tough pill to swallow considering this whole thing might just be a charade (we don't believe it is, but there's always the possibility, unfortunately), but she's made it work, and she's made it work exceptionally well. You can chalk most of that up to quality songwriting and production work, but that still doesn't explain the fact that her music has convinced so many people to suspend their disbelief, if only for a couple minutes at a time, in order to really enjoy what they're hearing on a very visceral level. This is a level of enjoyment that the romantics would like to believe can only be conjured up by those "starving artists" who have really suffered for their craft, pouring the whole contents of their heart and soul into the music. However, Lana seems to have achieved that with almost every track on Ultraviolence, and, well, we don't really think she's starving at all... It's easy to listen to a song by Rihanna, for instance, and dismiss it for its rampant commercialism, but for some reason, it's a lot harder to do with Lana's work despite the overwhelming evidence that she's just as coldly calculated as the rest of 'em. As people who value the creative process and honest, authentic art, we should probably advocate for an automatic DQ by simple virtue of the fact that the whole thing might be blatantly disingenuous, but no matter how much I'd like to subscribe to the speculation, we can't help but admire her music, and especially the stuff in her new album here. Case-in-point are the songs "Money Power Glory", and "Old Money". Both of these tracks reek of a hard-edged desperation that, when fused with their respective anthemic choruses, feel both timeless and heartfelt. The piano work and string sections swirl around with an understated confidence that mirrors Lana's simple, yet elegant, image, and they are never louder than they absolutely need to be. Nothing in either song seems to be fighting for attention, and despite the fact that both tracks are relatively quiet, the power achieved by all the individual elements working in concert is acutely impressive. In addition to this, her approaches to tracks like "Fucked My Way To The Top", and "Black Beauty", are equally noteworthy (notice the poignant titles of the track, too). After you've listened to all four of these songs, you'll have a pretty good grasp on how she's been able to dominate for the past three years. Her voice harkens back to eras long gone, but the lyrics are modern, and her delivery switches back and forth from a stiff falsetto, to gritty lines where it almost sounds like she's spitting out the words through clenched teeth. Nobody else in the mainstream right now has come close to this sort of (successful) finesse, and it's quite easy to get invested emotionally in the stories she weaves, no matter what kind of music you normally listen to, or attitude you bring to the table. All those melancholy lyrics about jeans, video games, and money you heard in the past may very well have been a clever ploy to exploit preexisting emotions in listeners, and we'll never know if Lana Del Rey is actually the tortured soul she's been telling the papers she is. However, what is verifiable is the staggering amount of quality music in Ultraviolence. Like a good piece of fiction, this album is best enjoyed when you approach it with a willingness to cooperate with the author. It's best if you don't dwell on the fact that Lana has, yet again, come out with a body of work that's as honest and genuine as it is commercially viable and clinically designed. Either way, she's won this round, again, and probably will more times in the future, so get used to it, and enjoy the music while we've the privilege to experience it fresh.
Lana Del Rey