Album Review: Lana Del Rey Continues Carving into Americana with Lust For Life

Alexis
Alexis
Jul 22, 2017 · 5 min read

If Lana Del Rey is smiling on the cover of her latest album, there’s hope for us all. Lana digs deeper into Americana with Lust for Life, and it’s an especially glorious journey for fans that have been following her since the Born To Die and Ultraviolence days. The queen of dollish dark pop has evolved herself into an angelically all-American folk artist, surfacing the country roots that were implied but not as thoroughly explored in previous works, while continuing to pull the threads of quintessential Lana themes: America, the youth, and the canon of dangerous and delicate youth culture.

Summary

Lana opens with “Love,” framing up Lust for Life with the existentially-soothing affirmation that “it’s enough to be young and in love.” The album’s titular single, “Lust for Life” follows, featuring The Weeknd and sinking listeners into the singer’s California vibes and signature sensuality. “13 Beaches” sees Lana drift into an airy ballad that departs from the optimism of the opening singles. Lana layers in her pouty prickliness with “Cherry” (“and all of my peaches are ruined, bitch”) and drives home Lust for Life’s wild west vibes with “Mustang.” On the next tracks, A$AP Rocky’s features complement the emotionally-unavailable swagger of “Summer Bummer” and the swinging schoolgirl charm of “Groupie Love” that are reminiscent of her first album. Lana digs in her heels with “In My Feelings,” however, daring the song’s audience to shy away from her passionate core: “Who’s tougher than this bitch? Who’s freer than me? You want to make the switch, be my guest, baby. I’m feeling all my fucking feelings.”

“Coachella — Woodstock in My Mind” marks a shift halfway through Lust For Life, where Lana transports listeners from the modern era to an epicenter of American counterculture. (I have to think that the decision to include both festivals in the title intentionally indicates the album’s path into the past.) Gentle guitar riffs fittingly transition listeners into “God Bless America — And All the Beautiful Women In It,” an anthem with a melodiously syncopated chorus punctuated by gun shots. The patriotism takes a darker turn with “When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing” as the song questions “is it the end of an era? Is it the end of America?”

Lyrically-simple collaborations with Stevie Nicks (“Beautiful People Beautiful Problems”) and Sean Ono Lennon (“Tomorrow Never Came”) in the latter half of the album showcase harmonious vocals, luring instrumentals, and simple truths, leaving behind sardonic sweetness for folkish authenticity. The sparsely titled tracks (“Heroin,” “Change,” “Get Free”) at the end of Lust for Life tighten back to classic Lana, the queen of self-aware chaos. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve got a war in my mind / I want to get off but I keep riding the ride / I never really noticed that I had to decide / To play someone’s game or to live my own life.” Dreamy pop guides listeners out of the album, sending them off with lingering waves of eighties-esque synth in the last thirty seconds. With Lust for Life, Lana proves that she’s capable of capturing a wider variety of genres and characters in her sound, as she continues telling the stories she started in previous albums.

What Stories?

The song “Carmen” crystallized the character that emerged on Lana’s breakout album Born to Die (2012), using a clear symbol of destructive seduction to ground the dark daddy’s girl charm that infused nearly every track. But the “little harlot, starlet, queen of Coney Island” that defined early Lana has been steadily expanding her purview to a larger swath of the cultural landscape. She ascended (or descended, perhaps) towards all-American embodiment by staking a claim on both coasts in Ultraviolence’s (2014) back-to-back tracks “Brooklyn Baby” and “West Coast,” and by venturing through corrupt domestic histories with songs like “Black Beauty” and “The Other Woman.” Dripping with noir, Honeymoon (2015) continued the haunting foray into American art, romance, and detachment, keeping an eye to the cultural fringe with references to Easy Rider and calls to “come to California, be a freak like me” (“Freak”).

Lana situates herself deeper in the canon of Americana on Lust for Life. Allusions to rock, from Woodstock to Mötley Crue, align her with rebellious cohorts the country has hosted throughout the generations, and her seamless lean into classic country, hip-hop, and R&B vibes via her guest features demonstrates her deftness at synching in sounds from across the spectrum of American music. It’s also clear, with this latest album, that Lana is not done singing national anthems, a trend she established with the aptly titled “National Anthem” on Born to Die. Lana sings with patriotic sincerity on “God Bless America,” which she immediately subverts in “When the World Was At War.” And while Lana’s work has consistently explored the theme of codependence, Lust for Life reveals a stronger appetite for independence. “It took 13 beaches to find one empty, and finally it’s mine,” Lana sings on the album’s third track. Even juxtaposed next to the Hollywood love story (/historic suicide) contained in “Lust for Life,” she and The Weeknd remind us, “We’re the masters of our own fate, we’re the captains of our own soul,” a serious departure from the Carmen who was always along for the ride.

Lust for Life is, in many ways, a light at the end of a tunnel. The album still grapples with the themes of love lost and missing meaning, but Lana is more assertive with her consolation. She’s calms existential qualms in the opening track “Love” and spins her own version of the American dream with lines like “it’s never too late to be what you want to be, to say what you want to say.” As Lana matures as an artist, she maintains a steady gaze on the youth. She talks to God about an audience that sounds remarkably like her own fan base in “Coachella”: “‘Cause what about all these children / And what about all their parents / And what about about all their crowns they wear / In hair so long like mine / And what about all their wishes / Wrapped up like garland roses / ‘Round their little heads / I said a prayer for a third time.” She’s tender and honest, and by god she’s even smiling on her album cover for the first time.

That’s not to says that Lust for Life isn’t tough. Lana’s focused less on fineries, she’s deep in her feels, and she gives fewer fucks. My favorite moment of the album is when she subtly growls, “critics can be so mean sometimes,” in her otherwise delicate song “Coachella.” I get goosebumps every time I hear that bristle puncture her lilt. The certainty with which she delivers Lust for Life (and the continued motif of guns cocking) remind us that Lana is as dangerous and as deferential as ever.

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