4/5
Blue Velvet.
Billy 'On The Street' Eichner, who right now is stealing the show on 'Impeachment', the latest Ryan Murphy 90's era of 'American Crime Story' entertainment history amongst all that Clinton and Lewinsky pizza and sax, tweeted it best for her last album. "I honestly forgot-am I allowed to like Lana Del Rey? Anyway the new album is gorgeous." Now following those 'Chemtrails Over The Country Club' that finally flew over after all that controversy in March, the "gangster Nancy Sinatra' is getting her Neil Young and Springsteen on releasing two albums in the same quarantined calendar like the flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood of the late, great DMX used to do one when it was dark and hell was hot. And we can't forget just how much we like her with all these 'Blue Banisters' and her iconic vocals that with velvet smoothness glide down the stairs like a silk slip as her delicate hands like fingers on piano keys caress the banisters in kind. It's 'Text Book' ("I guess you could call it") like the cinematic opening to this summer dress boardwalk extension surrounded by two dogs like when she sat on a throne 'Born To Die' before all that 'Ultraviolence', 'Lust For Life' after the 'Honeymoon' and 'Norman F#####g Rockwell'. And this storybook opening love letter to her father is on a St. Vincent 'Daddy's Home' throwback level. "You've got a Thunderbird, my daddy had one, too/Let's rewrite history, I'll do this dance with you/You know I'm not that girl, you know I'll never be/Maybe just the way we're different could set me free/There we were, screamin' "Black Lives Matter" in the crowd/By the Old Man River, and I saw you saw who I am/God, I wish I was with my father/He could see us in all our splendor/All the things I couldn't want for him."
Painting her banisters blue (*don't make the "I'd paint your bannisters" joke*) with the albums title track she sings, "In Arcadia, Arcadia/All roads that lead to you as integral to me as arteries/That pump the blood that flows straight to the heart of me/America, America/I can't sleep at home tonight, send me a Hilton Hotel/Or a cross on the hill, I'm a lost little girl/Findin' my way to you, Arcadia." Subtly showing that this delicate but definitive album of classics may just be her most highway expansive and best to date in their stories that twist and turn like those flat circles McConaughy used to talk about when he was a 'True Detective' smashing beer tins. The rio Western trip of 'The Trio' interlude that breaks into some hip-hop like a big-three furthers this for the movie making music star who has worked with A$AP Rocky twice on one album like 'The Harder They Fall'. "Grenadine quarantine, I like you a lot/It's LA, "Hey" on Zoom, Target parking lot/And if this is the end, I want a boyfriend/Someone to eat ice cream with and watch television/Or walk home from the mall with/'Cause what I really meant is when I'm being honest/I'm tired of this s###" she sings in her 'Black Bathing Suit'. Before she tells you what happens 'If You Lie Down With Me' and it's brass band soundtrack scoring outro as the 'Beautiful' ("I can turn blue into something beautiful" she tells these 'Banisters') piano plays again, Sam.
"There's something in the air/The girls are runnin' 'round in summer dresses/With their masks off and it makes me so happy/Larchmont Village smells like lilies of the valley/And the bookstore doors are opening/And it's finally happening," the 'Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass' book writer sings in this hopeful for a post quarantine age with the vaccine, trading 'Violets For Roses'. Getting her ultraviolet on. Before shaking her hands with a 'Dealer' and coming away with a whole new sound and an uncredited Miles Kane all for the reflections of the lost album that she almost put her hand to with The Last Shadow Puppets. On 'Thunder' she kills it with flowers like Brandon singing, "You act like f#####g Mr. Brightside when you're with all your friends/But I know what you're like when the party ends." Before the burning out in California of 'Wildfire Wildflower'. "Not to turn into a wildfire/To light up your night/With only my smile and nothing that burns/Baby, I’ll be like a wildflower/I live on sheer willpower/I’ll do my best never to turn into something/That burns, burns, burns/Like the others, baby, burns, burns, burns," the chorus that promises "like a million tomorrows" rings off the hook. But it's the acoustic 'Nectar Of The Gods' that going down smoothly over tangy acoustics sounds like the twang of classic Lizzy Grant. All as this 'Living Legend' extends hers like "blackbirds will sing in the same key". And boy, that guitar. Now, sakura season seems like yesterday and the 'Cherry Blossom' "on your sycamore" (steady) brings it all back like fallen petals down the river of the European like Naka-Meguro in Tokyo. "Little ghost, tall, tan like milk and honestly" getting her Rupi Kaur poetry on songwriting prose. Closing with the last letter of 'Sweet Carolina' not to be confused with Neil Diamond's "ba, ba, ba, ba" of 'Sweet Caroline'. Instead it's this Rey of light touching you with the most beautiful chorus she's ever crafted on a song that also says "f### you Kevin" like forgetting about Macaulay Culkin. All as these 'Blue Banisters' take you home in lockdown, to the place you belong. Where it's safe, your close to heart and where Lana can be herself again. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Text Book', 'Arcadia', 'Sweet Carolina'.
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