To some degree, you know what you’re going to get with each new Lana Del Rey album. Actually, to a very large degree, you know what you’re going to get with a new LDR album. She’s taken her aesthetic of Hollywood sadcore and mined it thoroughly, albeit skillfully. There’s a grab-bag of images that come with any of her albums and they are the same fast cars, Gatsby, bad relationships, Hollywood glamour, nostalgia, Los Angeles style that you should expect by now. However, this iteration is her at her best. She’s brought a sharpness here that’s unprecedented and delivered one of the strongest albums of the year.
The opening track drops the one-liner “Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news” with a wonderful casualness and follows it later with the clever and scathing stanza “Goddamn, man-child / You act like a kid even though you stand six foot two / Self-loathing poet, resident Laurel Canyon know-it-all / You talk to the walls when the party gets bored of you / But I don’t get bored, I just see it through / Why wait for the best when I could have you? You?” and has an interesting pause for breath before the second you, before she cuts loose to sing it and this expertly transitions the song from the storytelling to the music. The schtick of the self-aware, submissive woman is becoming a little too routine, but she has mostly has the chops to still pull it off.
However, it falls apart for the less expert of her songs. “Mariners Apartment Complex” has a couple of very sharp lines (like the opening pair of “You took my sadness out of context / At the Mariners Apartment Complex) but it just doesn’t do enough of anything. It starts out with very strong storytelling, but then doesn’t deliver on it and is too laid back musically. Similarly, “Love song” is trite both musically and lyrically. “Cinnamon Girl” and “How to disappear” at least save themselves from the hyper-dramatization of the storylines with very well done music.
In the same way, “Bartender” manages to overcome the self-indulgence of the story with the fact that it’s just excellent music. Her voice works very well against the piano and song’s minimalism works very well. Unfortunately, it’s sandwiched by “The greatest”, which is just air and “Happiness is a butterfly”, which is as self-indulgent as “Bartender” but not as skilled. Mostly however, her missteps are saved by her ability to make very good music. “Doin’ time” is a fascinating cover and manages to match the album’s aesthetic, but is still incomprehensible as it is neither clever in itself nor as a part of the whole. It sounds good though. Her voice does a real number on the song.
When things come together though, the album really shines. The aforementioned title track is able to match her A-game lyricism with strong music and she is able to pull off the complete package fairly regularly. The trip-hop opening of “Fuck it I love you” is very strong and then she picks up the pace just to let it drop as she croons the chorus. Her lyrics are razor sharp as well. She’s pushes complex thoughts and detailed pictures with a remarkable economy of actual words.
“California” is the LDR aesthetic at its best. It has awkward slang, doomed relationships and space for her voice and the result delivers on the promise. Similarly, “The Next Best American Record” puts everything together.
The true highlight though is the single “Venice Bitch.” It’s slow, woozy dream pop done very, very well. It’s effortlessly ethereal and it’s got that good American imagery that she thrives on. It plays hard on the sadness of Americana and finds space for an amazing electric guitar squeal in the middle. It really does it all.
The album finishes with “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it.” It’s a shockingly risky song to make. It’s stripped down too far for comfort and that puts a lot of weight on the song and you can see it buckle under that weight repeatedly. However, the distillation of the song, the album and her entire body of work into the couplet “Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have / But I have it” is extremely powerful and done beautifully by her.
Norman Fucking Rockwell! is not an album without flaws, and it’s starting to feel like those flaws will follow Lana Del Rey for her entire career, but it is nonetheless excellent. When she puts all the pieces together with the skill that she can sometimes summon, she makes music as good as any out there and this album has no shortage of those moments.
Top Five Records 
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