Lana del Rey’s amazing comeback

What a comeback. Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey’s latest studio effort, could not be her best album (the nod still goes to the debut masterpiece Born to die/Paradise); however, NFR! is perhaps her most cohesive and direct work so far and a gigantic step forward from her 2017’s lackluster album Lust for life.

Lana has aptly described the new album as a “mood record,” a heady collection of psych-rock and piano dirges that pour into each other and rarely shift tempo from track to track. “Mariners Apartment Complex,” “Cinnamon Girl,” and “Venice Bitch” amble along to hazy, psychedelic grooves, closer in spirit, if not style, to Del Rey’s breakout hit “Video Games” than the hooky singles that have followed.

The downbeat, piano-led arrangements remain remarkably consistent throughout Norman Fucking Rockwell, with odd, David Lynchian touches giving the songs an almost Gothic creepiness.

Lana is one of our most complicated stars, a constantly unresolvable puzzle—someone who once called her own work “more of a psychological music endeavor” than pop. But on Norman Fucking Rockwell! that ground-swelling complexity coheres to reveal an indisputable fact: she is the best american singer-songwriter, period.

She might be the least likely pop star ever: a believer in slow tempos who concentrates on albums at a moment when bite-size singles predominate. But where others can struggle to outlive a viral smash, she offers fans entrée into a fully realized world. Which means she’s free to evolve at her own idiosyncratic pace.

Norman Fucking Rockwell! is a tribute to life and love in and around Venice Beach, Del Rey’s current geographic muse. Yet from an artist who paints what she sees, we can only imagine what we’ll get once she looks even further into the storm that’s coming.

Rating: 9/10

Standout tracks:
Venice Bitch, Fuck It I Love You, Cinnamon Girl, The Greatest, Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman like Me to Have… But I Have It