Album Review: Lust For Life, Lana Del Rey

One of the delights of David Lynch’s resurrected Twin Peaks is its conveyor belt of cameos by left-field American songwriters. But amidst the throng of waifs and weirdos, a prominent absence has been Lana Del Rey – arguably a surprise considering the ‘Video Games’ singer is routinely hailed as a personification in musical form of the Lynchian worldview.

It’s possible a Del Rey guest-turn struck Lynch as too obvious – the equivalent of the show having a conversation with itself. Or perhaps he simply disagrees with the thesis that Del Rey’s fever-dream sensibility is of a part with his nightmarish ennui. If the latter is the case, it’s tempting to conclude he and Del Rey would find common cause. Because while her fourth album brims with that familiar fallen prom queen brooding, it also sets itself against many of the archetypes that have come to define Del Rey. Meet the New Lana – sort of different from the old one.

That something is afoot is hinted at by the sleeve shot, in which Del Rey, in a retro gypsy dress, flashes a nervous smile. A possible reading is that this is a repudiation of the persona cultivated across her previous three records and originally established with ‘Video Games’: that of the broken-winged castaway, perpetually in search of a shoulder upon which to sob.

So it goes with the music. The title track is a sly, stinging duet with The Weeknd, uncharacteristically enthusiastic as he and Del Rey wryly trade lines. Hayseed dirge ‘When The World Was At War We Kept Dancing’ similarly wears its feelings on its sleeve, with Del Rey expressing the wish that, no matter how bad things get (and they could get pretty bad), people will still want to sway in the moonlight.

A steady drip of cameos provide a satisfying counterpoint to Del Rey’s Marmite coo. A$AP Rocky adds wit and irreverence to ‘Summer Bummer’, while Sean Lennon materialises on the (suitably Beatles-seque) ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. There’s an epic meeting of minds, meanwhile, as Stevie Nicks breezes in on the twinkling ‘Beautiful People Beautiful Problems’. This is not quite the epic reinvention some of Del Rey’s recent interviews have portended. Rather, as with Lynch’s Twin Peaks The Return, Lust For Life offers fresh perspectives on a formula that had arguably teetered on hackneyed. Nobody would accuse Del Rey of chameleonic tendencies – but this is as close as she’s yet come to changing her plumage.

Out now.