Lana Del Rey
"Chemtrails Over the Country Club"
(Interscope / Polydor ***)
Lana Del Rey hits the road looking for America on "Chemtrails Over the Country Club."
It’s been an ongoing pursuit, going back to “Video Games,” the 2010 single in which the former Lizzy Grant first introduced herself as a siren of sun-kissed California noir in the shadow of the Hollywood sign.
Recognition of Del Rey’s stature as an auteur was unjustly slow, but with the release of 2019′s "Norman F— Rockwell," the critical establishment got the memo and declared LDR to be a Great American Songwriter.
Her seventh album is by no means a makeover, but it does subtly shift Del Rey’s languorous sound. She sings more in a breathy upper register and leans into country and folk, particularly on “Breaking up Slowly,” a duet with Nashville singer Nikki Lane, which rhymes “life of regret” with “Tammy Wynette.”
Del Rey has been embroiled in multiple controversies of late, from Instagram comments critical of other female artists to scrutiny over the diversity of the crowd on the "Chemtrails" cover. Perhaps as a result, the album considers the cost of fame, and the singer often sounds as if she’d has enough.
The opener, “White Dress,” conjures her innocent, 19-year-old self, “listening to the White Stripes when they were white-hot.” The song invokes Philadelphia jazzman Sun Ra as an interstellar escape artist, and makes a good joke about entertainment industry misogyny, recalling a make-believe Men in Music Business Conference.
On “Let Me Love You Like a Woman,” Del Rey declares she’s “ready to leave LA,” and much of "Chemtrails" tests out alternative locales for her seductive, subtly arresting songs. “Tulsa Jesus Freak” suggests “we should go back to Arkansas, trade this body for a can of gin.” And “Yosemite” idealizes a national park getaway that appeals because it stops time in its tracks: “Isn’t it cool how nothing here changes at all?” — Dan DeLuca
