The Guardian
Friday 30 August 2019 13
Reviews Music
Talented
artist paints
the same
old picture
Alexis Petridis’s album of the week
Lana Del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell!
era apocalyptic dread into the mix,
the formula is subject to subtle
alterations. The action has moved to
the neighbourhoods of Laurel and
Topanga Canyons, and the lyrics are
fi lled with references to music made
by their celebrated late-60s denizens,
from Mama Cass to Graham Nash
to Joni Mitchell. A lot of its tracks
open with solo piano before the
strings crash in, in the manner of
Neil Young’s A Man Needs a Maid.
The protagonist of the title track is
beset by the suspicion that her Matt
Dillon-a-like may be a little too self-
absorbed for his own good – “man-
child ... know-it-all” – which, by the
standards of Del Rey’s universe,
makes her Andrea Dworkin. She
is capable of devising a scenario
that sounds convincing rather than
caricatured. California off ers an
impactful female perspective on the
kind of crushed masculinity Bruce
Springsteen writes about. And there
is also the occasional hint that Del
Rey may be writing not in deadly
earnest but with tongue in cheek.
Or at least you hope so: “If he’s a
serial killer, what’s the worst that can
happen to a girl that’s already hurt?”
she sings on Happiness Is a Butterfl y.
Lyrics aside, the formula doesn’t
preclude beautiful songwriting:
beguiling, swooning melodies
abound on Mariner’s Apartment
Complex and Fuck It, I Love You.
The disparity between a cover ofSublime’s lumpy Doin’ Time and
the quality of the original tunes
is unmistakable. Sometimes, the
uniformity of mood and pace means
that the subtlest production touches
leap out: the coda of Cinnamon
Girl, with its burst of EDM-ish
electronics; the distorted bass that
fades in and out of Happiness Is a
Butterfl y; the breaking glass and
sirens buried deep in the mix of Next
Best American Record. Elsewhere,
the uniformity of tone and pace just
sounds uniform, a state of aff airs
not much helped by the fact that
a lot of the tracks feel over-long.
The elegiac, end-of-summer mood
of Venice Bitch sounds absolutely
gorgeous, but it’s allowed to ramble
on for 10 minutes, tricked out with
guitar solos and extempore vocals.
Listening to Norman Fucking
Rockwell! is an alternately beguiling
and frustrating experience. There
are moments when you willingly
succumb to its sound and its
songwriting, counteracted by
moments when you just think: oh
God, here we go again. Its author is
clearly very talented but it’s hard
not to wish that she would broaden
her perspective, adopt a diff erent
persona, shake things up a little.
Eight years and fi ve albums on, that
seems unlikely: Del Rey isn’t in the
business of springing surprises,
which may account for why her
business is still fl ourishing.Norman Fucking Rockwell! off ers
evidence for the prosecution and
the defence. The formula is intact.
Everything proceeds at a glacial
pace, strings swell cinematically,
guitars twang Twin Peaks-ishly; Del
Rey and producer Jack Antonoff
put the studio’s reverb unit through
its paces, and we once more fi nd
ourselves in the presence of ladies
saying things like, “I’ll make you
real proud of your baby” and “If you
hold me without hurting me you’ll
be the fi rst who ever did” to a new
selection of unmitigated tossers:
callous drug addicts, fl y-by-nights,
abusers, self-absorbed musicians,
etc. “John met me by the training
yard / Cuts on his face ’cause he
fought too hard,” she sings on How
to Disappear. “I love that man like no
other,” she adds. You don’t say.
And yet, as on Lust for Life (2017),
which stirred a dollop of Trump-PopLabel Polydor/Interscope
★★★☆☆
W
e live in a world
of terrifying
fl ux and
instability,
where any
consideration
of what might happen next comes
with a side order of blind terror. If
you were looking to understand
the appeal of Lana Del Rey , eight
years and fi ve albums since her
commercial breakthrough, you
might alight on the fact that
she off ers a certain respite from
uncertainty. You put her albums
on and know more or less exactly
what will happen next. There will
be ballads decorated with cinematic
orchestration. Guitars will twang
and electronics will waft and surge
in a manner that evokes Angelo
Badalementi’s soundtrack to Twin
Peaks, and her voice will be swathed
in reverb in a manner that evokes
Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star.
The vocals will have a dead-eyed
quality at odds with the yearning
ache of the lyrics, in which girls
will simper after brooding n’er-do-
wells they invariably address as
“baby”. A world will be conjured
in which every woman is a weak,
willing victim and every man
an unmitigated tosser and dark
intimations of sexual exploitation
and violence will co-exist with a
kind of 80s Athena poster version
of dangerous masculinity: whatever
the song, she will invariably sound
like she’s singing to a monochrome
Matt Dillon lookalike in a white vest,
carrying a truck tyre against a desert
backdrop, a cigarette dangling from
his bruised lips.
Naysayers quibble that essentially
making the same album over and
over again represents a failure of
imagination: Del Rey wasn’t joking
when she admitted she had “already
said everything I wanted to say”
after the release of her debut album
in 2012. To her fans, however,
she is the musical equivalent of a
genre fi ction novelist or short story
writer whose work concentrates
in one area. After all, no one ever
complained that Raymond Chandler
kept wanging on about seedy private
eyes and bitchy platinum blondes.GrimeArtist KanoAlbum Hoodies All SummerLabel Parlophone★★★☆☆
“Every day get
new drama,
something’s gone
down,” despairs
Kano on Hoodies All
Summer, his voice
weary with worry the status quo
might never change. The East Ham
MC, who has been a cult grime hero
for 15 years now, having announced
himself to the underground with
debut single P’s & Q’s in 2004,
embraces his elder statesman
status on this sixth album, cutting
a caring big brother fi gure over
soulful melodies. “Any beef can be
squashed if hands can be shaken,
any hand can be shaken when the
blood dries – I guess that’s not a
thug line,” the 34-year-old raps on
piano hymnal Trouble , setting the
blueprint for an album that shows
understanding of the forces that
drive young men to violence, but
pleads with them to fi nd another
path. “Another funeral, another
rest-in-peace, another judge gives
out 20, welcome to my city,” he
cries on Good Youtes Walk Amongst
Evil , as sombre synths echo in the
backdrop.
Kano has won the admiration
of both his grime peers and indie
luminaries such as Damon Albarn
in his decade and a half of dextrous
wordplay over UK bass and garage-
indebted beats. He is yet, however,
to enjoy a mainstream moment like
those had recently by Stormzy and
Skepta. The refl ective, ambitious
Hoodies All Summer isn’t likely to
change that, but it will cement his
reputation as one of grime’s wisest
truth-tellers: opener Free Years
Later is his very own Ultralight
Beam , while Can’t Hold We Down
speaks to the irrepressible spirit of
both the rapper, and the community
he aspires to uplift. he aspires to uplift. Al Horner Al HornerRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws