Sometimes other writers do your work for you and Caryn Ganz’s (former editor at Spin) excellent Rolling Stone review of Lana Del Rey’s sophomore effort Ultraviolence does exactly that. “the epic schmaltz of Ennio Morricone, reflected through the haze of a thousand dramatic selfies” is a pretty damn good description of the album. It isn’t a put down, Lana is what she is and what she is is the teenage girl locked in her bedroom, imagining her mom and dad crying at her grave with a sort of grim satisfaction.
Is that your scene? It sure is mine. Produced by Dan Auerbach with a more organic sound than Born To Die, clothed in a Jack White metallic blue and song after song are atmospheric nightmares with “West Coast”, the phenomenal head of the class which surprisingly enough failed to break pop. All of a type, all of a sign, with Lana’s haunted pitch singing and wall of melancholia sound interrupted by the occasional guitar solo, by the end of “Shades Of Cool” the song appears to have escaped from a Black Key album. Lana claims to miss the hip hop elements on her first album, but both albums work in equal measure and if the album bombs it is only because people have moved on. The quality here is first rate.
But as good as it is, the songs can’t live up to the titles, “Fucked My Way To The Top” is great but not as great as its name, it soon cools down to “need you bleed you” mode. A beauty but not that much of a beauty. “Ultraviolence” is like a deep blue ballad which seems to sink its teeth into you, it powers up and then subsides, like a wave, or like sexual desire. “I can hear violence, violence…” she says and it is hard to deny it.
With only “The Other Woman”, a 1950s cover, a little out of place, the song is relentless and slow. It is like if you’ve ever dated a crazy girl and she gets on a riff about something. It doesn’t quite make sense and the more she speaks, the more you realize you’ve got a serious problem. That’s what Lana is like, it is the vibe she is into. And it works, song after song, it maintains this edgy weirdness . Even her “What Is A youth” rewrite “Old Money” sounds less Elizabethan and more Bellevue.
Lana may well be crazy, or she may well be acting, but whatever she is doing you can’t help believe in her in the role. What more should an album do than sustain a mood, a role, a point of view; Ultraviolence is insane and insanely true to itself.
Grade: A-
