![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The pace is unwavering: her notably powerful voice reaches piercing highs before evaporating, like steam rising from hot coals, while Auerbach punctuates his reverby sandstorms with occasional guitar solos. Most of these 11 songs are stately ballads that swap her old hip-hop affectations and hiccupping-baby vocals for languid desert rock. Produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, however, ‘Ultraviolence’ attempts to define Del Rey’s musical identity. It’s either smart postmodern mythmaking or an equally smart get-out-of-jail-free card. As she said recently, “ literally has nothing to do with me”. On her 2012 official debut, ‘Born To Die’, she was an idea among icons. It’s hard to know who she means, especially because mimicking Lana Del Rey would be hard. Rather than the mea culpa that Authenticity Bores would like it to be, the latter is a territorial, if mournful, bitch-slap: “I’m a dragon, you’re a whore/Don’t even know what you’re good for/Mimicking me’s a fucking bore… to me”, she glowers. The tracklisting of her second official album could form her manifesto: ‘Sad Girl’, ‘Pretty When You Cry’, ‘Money Power Glory’, ‘Fucked My Way Up To The Top’. That’s not a good thing for young girls, even young people, to hear.Like Morrissey, Lana Del Rey has mastered song titles that perpetuate her reputation with a knowing wink. “This sort of shirt-tugging, desperate, don’t leave me stuff. “I listened to that Lana Del Rey record and the whole time I was just thinking it’s so unhealthy for young girls to be listening to, you know, ‘I’m nothing without you,'” she said in an interview with The FADER. Still, as Lorde pointed out last fall, not everyone will recognize or appreciate that distinction. ![]() That’s a pretty straightforward glorification of domestic violence, but it’s probably worth noting that Lana Del Rey, the artist born Elizabeth Grant, is different from Lana Del Rey, the flawed character who narrates screwed-up tales of vice and luxury that the real-life LDR likely wouldn’t endorse. The “Video Games” singer quotes the Crystals’ controversial 1962 song “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” drops lines like “he hurt me, but it felt like true love” and begs for “that ultraviolence” amid the call of sirens. The track is more of what fans have come to expect and enjoy from Del Rey over the years - sweeping, cinematic strings anchored by gloomy piano chords - and her lyrics once again traffic in the baddest of bad boys and nostalgia for decades past. ![]()
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