Album Review: Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Lana Del Rey has, throughout her career, understood the potency of myth-making. So it is surely by design rather than accident that her best album yet arrives sheathed in one of the ugliest sleeves this side of the bargain bin at a “country and Irish” record fair.

Truly it’s atrocious. Del Rey is dressed in violent lemon, her arms around a bristly-haired chap rocking an aggressive norm-core look. The sky in the background fades from Instagram-y twilight blue to Bob Ross-style brush strokes.

The dude is Duke Nicholson, grandson of Jack. He’s also on the back of the vinyl edition, grappling with a sail. The precise nature of his relationship with Del Rey is unclear. On the evidence of her fifth long-player he will hope not to find his way onto her naughty list.

She is taking no prisoners. Norman Fucking Rockwell! feels like a calculated moving-on from the muse-to-David Lynch persona honed on her earlier work, in particular her debut Born To Die. “Goddamn, man-child/ You act like a kid even though you stand six-foot-two,” she coos terrifyingly on the title-track.

It’s an explicit diss to an acquaintance so convinced of his own genius he’s impossible to be around. “Often I’ve ended up with these creative types,” Del Rey elaborated to Zane Lowe. “They just go on and on about themselves.”

That sense of ushering in a Lana Del Rey 2.0 is borne through on the single ‘Fuck It, I Love You’. She’s no longer a daddy’s girl or prom queen crying on the porch in her new dress. Instead, she’s the one in control. Over a breathy Laurel Canyon melody, she tells a lover she’ll stay with him but on her terms – which means accepting, not ignoring his flaws.

It’s thrilling, as are the lulling soundscapes conjured with new producer Jack Antonoff (studio handmaid to Taylor Swift, Lorde, St Vincent and others). Here is where Del Rey most unashamedly connects to her past. As before, the guitars have a gauzy retro twang. And her vocals feel like they’ve got lost on their way from the ’60s Los Angeles evoked by Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

What shines through is the daring simplicity of her songwriting, and also her complicated perspective on being a woman in the world today. Love is tricky, the album argues. But a killer torch song can contain multitudes, even as it floors you with a knockout chorus.

9/10