After a false start as Lizzie Grant, the New York singer revamps her fledgling career with a stunning double A-side.
It seems like 2011 is a year where some of the best new music is coming from artists with heavily calculated images—something that hasn’t been in vogue in the indie community since the heavily stylized synthpop boom of the 80s. The Weeknd for instance, refuses to do press, and outside a known connection with Drake, doesn’t seem to have any real existence in our world, but more so in our subconscious, playing both the angel and devil on our shoulders.
In the case of Lana Del Rey, her calculations are in place, although not quite as carefully as the seemingly past-less Weeknd. While her website promotes her as if her forthcoming 7″ is her only record to date, it’s fairly easy to listen to the singer’s false start as Lizzy Grant, an artist who never really got off the ground two years ago. While her EP and the handful of songs that cropped up before her reboot had quality elements, namely her voice and sultry delivery, the tracks were too modern. The EP’s title track, “Kill Kill,” for instance has a catchy chorus, with the refrain, “I’m in love with a dying man,” and a video that employs the same use of found footage, yet the track and its brethren would not be uncommon in the background to your recent visit to Starbucks—pleasant but indistinct musical wallpaper. While the music needed sharpening, her visual aesthetic however was already in place.
Del Rey’s image is that of a hauntingly world-weary Hollywood starlet, or possibly a mob wife. That image though has no connection to today’s definition of those characters; Del Rey’s aesthetic is linked to a half-century ago, emulating the persona of a character that would have existed somewhere between 1947-1964.
Of course a look is irrelevant to the quality of the music, but it’s important to mention it being that her sound fits the style so well, not because it sounds like a throwback, but because its tragic sound seems to harken that mood. Take “Video Games,” (never mind that they didn’t exist back then) which opens with the ringing of a funeral bell and and some windy ambiance before a progression of dusty piano and harp samples enter. Strings accompany the song throughout and compliment Del Rey’s voice perfectly as they both manage to sound emotional and powerful in their resignation. Fiona Apple comes to mind, especially on the minor chord that hits when she sings “…is loving you” at the end of the chorus. That type of chord change is one of Apple’s calling cards yet it never sounds like a retread of any specific song by her.
“Blue Jeans,” which will appear on the other side of the upcoming single, contains a clip of Lawrence Ferlinghetti reciting one of his poems at The Band’s last performance, chronicled in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz.” Ferlinghetti’s commanding voice starts the song off well, “Blue Jeans” being a much more urgent song than “Video Games,” while remaining in that song’s dream like state. Nancy Sinatra is a key component to both songs, and not just because of Del Ray’s “Gangster Nancy Sinatra” look. Sinatra’s ballads, like her rendition of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” are a key influence to the tragic state of this pair of songs.
Unfortunately Del Ray’s Nancy worshiping backfires on the previously released “Kinda Outta Luck,” which is a pretty dreadful song that manages to take the sound of “These Boots Are Made For Walking” and outfit it with a set of dopey lyrics that hamfistedly hammer on the said gangster persona. That song doesn’t appear to be on her website, and will hopefully be discarded when it comes time for her full length LP. Until then, do check out her new single.
October 05, 2011 at 3:23 am, balls said:
acclaimed solely because she is hot. Her music is more boring than this post.