Lizzy F###### Grant.
Attack of the 50ft Lana Del Rey. 'Doin' Time', sandal stomping around the City of Angels, Los Angeles. Singing about the LBC, "ever since Snoop came through and crushed the buildings" for her brand new music video of the year. New York's been lost, but from a 'Brooklyn Baby' who sings along to Lou Reed, to a 'Venice Bitch', the former IT girl who was 'Born To Die' like Springsteen was 'Born To Run' is really it now too like Jessica Chastain. The self dubbed, "gangster Nancy Sinatra" is still so bang, bang, "callin' kiss, kiss," 'Young and Beautiful', a year away from us all being in the roaring twenties once more (how crazy is that?) like 'The Great Gatsby' all over again F Scott, Luhrmann or DiCaprio. But these boots were made for walking all over you if you think that's all that matters to the power of a woman in this Haim, 'Summer Girl', Maggie Rogers, King Princess and Billie Eilish (who this queen Stan's) time to be alive against all the bad guys...duh! 'Looking For America' and a way out of all the ultraviolence the 'Love' singers 'Honeymoon' is over, but there is still a 'Lust For Life', freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of worship and freedom of speech on the new album named after the American author and artist, 'Norman F###### Rockwell'. Get around the table for turkey like it was Thanksgiving already. Some 'NFR' for your NPR from LDR. Tune in from your car radio as the 50 feet high and rising Del Rey climbs out the cinema screen of a vintage drive-in movie theatre that Brad Pitt's character from Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood' probably lives behind with his dog. As she can shakes the 'Happy Days' out of a classic American muscle car of a man doing the tragic romance dirty on her life and pint size in comparison blonde bob, Lizzy Grant like alter-ego for something so B-movie brilliant from the cinematic singer. Aaaay! Sit on that! In-between making 'Season Of The Witch' songs for Guillermo del Toro's 'Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark' movies like when her big eyes went 'Once Upon A Dream' hauntingly with that voice for 'Maleficent' for this 50's feel. Now playing music video games-releasing two back to back like recording two knockout songs together for 'Lust' with A$AP Rocky and three in the same week-she's on a yacht with a model friend, hand held out reaching for you to come onboard too.
Cue 'The Simpsons' Ralph Wiggum jumping through the living room window meme. "Oh, take this veil from off my eyes/My burning sun will, some day, rise/So, what am I gonna be doin' for a while?/Said, I'm gonna play with myself/Show them, now, we've come off the shelf", she smoke sings behind the mirrors, 'Doin' Time' on her huge new hot hit across the California sun. All as she checks her reflection in a high-rise window, cools off by drinking from a water tower like it was just another cup of coffee, whilst fanning herself with a palm tree and kicks sand at a moviegoing watching crowd at her truly getting 'High By The Beach' at the drive in. The Fonz like jukebox of the surfing muscle beach life of 'F### It I Love You' also segues into the shipping container docks look of 'The Greatest' for the dual music video release just last week too. The longest clip since her almost ten minute home video of the Titanic track 'Venice Bitch' off of Santa Monica. "I like to see everything in neon/Drink lime green, stay up 'til dawn", she sings on the expletive single of her expletive album, inviting us to, "Dream a little dream of me/Make me into something sweet", and f### it we love her too. We're there. As on 'Venice Bitch' she tells us, "you're beautiful and I'm insane/we're American made." With the perfect hook and "Fear fun, fear love/Fresh out of fucks, forever/Tryin' to be stronger for you/Ice cream, ice queen/I dream in jeans and leather/Life's dream I'm sweet for you" opening. The beautifully bleak 'Born To Die' and 'Ultraviolence' pairing was this Lake Placid born song sirens New York 1980's, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring like downtown art scene. Whilst her Hollywood 'Honeymoon' and smily happy people 'Lust For Life' young and in 'Love' albums birth became a new 'West Coast', Parliaments on fire, hands up direction which is furthered by 'Norman Rockwell's' 'California' cool like the classic track of that same state of play name. F###### cool. So after the two, coast to coast, Knicks to Lakers (or these days Nets to Clippers) like halves to her career, her fifth album (or sixth or seventh if you count the truest Lizzy Grant and the perfect 'Paradise' EP, 'Born To Die' re-release) shows that this is no L.A. phase but the next stage of her screenplay certified, cinematic career for her movie like music canvas of poetic artistry. Even if she, "moved to California, but it's just a state of mind". We feel right there with her atmospheric sound in kind.
Dylan's legend permeates through New York's Greenwich Village like the coffee shops Lana probably used to write in as Del Rey now has a dominant and definitive, dynamic discography as she chases her own great American songbook for a social media generation in need of swiping towards something real. This is her freewheelin' one. She says it herself on 'The Next Great American Record'. Hotel California, playing The Eagles in Malibu as she sings, "And we were so obsessed with writin' the next best American record/That we give all we had 'til the time we got to bed/'Cause we knew we could." And she may just have harmonizing, "My baby used to dance underneath my architecture/To the Houses of the Holy, smokin' on them cigarettes". Or on the tribute title track, "Goddamn, man-child/You f##### me so good that I almost said, "I love you"/You're fun and you’re wild/But you don't know the half of the s### that you put me through". Lana hasn't got anytime for that s### anymore. Times up and this is the new Dua Lips generations national anthem. F### Norman F###### Rockwell if he thinks his arts more important than his muse. Del Rey will be no one's femme fatale, but her own Hollywood throwback scarlet starlet. "You took my sadness out of context/At the Mariners Apartment Complex/I ain't no candle in the wind/I'm the board, the lightning, the thunder/Kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder/Who you are and who you've been" she stands on her own two like the 'Mariners Apartment Complex' in the same song, before this 'Cinnamon Girl' gives us another cool song that will make the radio more friendly to her signature song that greats like Neil Young would be proud of as 'Quiet Place' couples share headphones and slow dance together in the middle of the night. It gets deep and dark however on 'How To Disappear' as Lana laments, "John met me down on the boulevard/Cried on his shoulder 'cause life is hard/The waves came in over my head/What you been up to, my baby?" But then with wine flowing with Bacardi and Crosby, Stills and Nash playing Lana's poetry (that isn't bad like a former lovers on 'NFR') is warm inside as she falls in love with a 'Bartender' on the roadside E Street Springsteen, singing under the Western Stars, "I bought me a truck in the middle of the night/60 MPH on PCH drive/Here to Long Beach to Newport by your side/As they don't yet know where I reside/60 miles from the last place I hide/With my bar-t-t-tender, hold me all night." Spreading her sonic wings on 'Happiness Is A Butterfly' everything looks all good until 'Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman...But I Have It'. The classic closer at her most, "I've been tearing around in my fucking nightgown
24/7 Sylvia Plath/Writing in blood on the walls/'Cause the ink in my pen don't work in my notepad" personal. Still there is hope with the trademark tone of Del Rey's sound. A week after Taylor Swift's pure pop 'Lover' classic, you'll love this more punctuated pop even more. We may know what to expect these days with the dark paradise of a Lana Del Rey record as it fever dream plays into our stream of consciousness, but that's not just a good thing. It's a beautiful one my princes and king princesses. Melancholy beauty, with 'Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass', Lana is about to book of rhymes independently release some pure poetry this year like she previewed in her iconic cover shoot for Vogue Italia. But as of right now there's nothing more poetic than 'Norman Fucking Rockwell'. Pardon my French. And if that wasn't enough she's already writing her next album, remaining 'White Hot Forever'. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Venice Bitch', 'The Next Great American Record', 'Doin' Time'.
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