Lana Del Rey is one of those artists you don’t ever wish to be. Her debut record, 2012’s Born To Die, if we discount the later withdrawn Lana Del Ray released 2010, was panned by critics. A performance on Saturday Night Live in January of the same year, before the album release, was similarly chewed apart by viewers as she appeared shaky and lacking confidence during her first real time to shine. She has been labelled, among other things, as an ‘anti-feminist,’ a subject she has stated she has no interest in. And this all in two years. She has described how her rise to fame was lacking the positives one normally associates particularly with the early days of a musicians accession, and in the same interview with the Guardian she was quoted as saying “I wish I was dead already.” A particularly negative and morose statement by anyone’s standards.
However, these low-points have to be balanced with her level of success. Her debut sold 7 million copies, and was the fifth best-selling album of 2012. “Video Games,” a track taken off of Born To Die, was featured on sites such as Pitchfork, and was named the Guardian’s best song of 2011. Another track off of the album, “Summertime Sadness,” received a double-dosing of success via a remix produced by Cedric Gervais, and peaked at number six on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, her highest in the country. She performed at Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s pre-wedding celebration at the Palace of Versailles. And to top it all off, Lou Reed apparently wanted to write a song with her before he died.
Following Born To Die Del Rey dropped Paradise, which featured three tracks to be included in her short film Tropico, another project which largely lukewarm response. Coupled with comments that she would not release any further music, it was assumed by many that it was Del Rey’s leaving gift, an attempt at some resolution following her short career. And so when a picture was put up on her Twitter with the caption ‘me and Dan Auerbach (Black Keys) are excited to present you “Ultraviolence”’ confirming her new record it was met with sighs and cheers in equal measure. The hollow character profiles and excessive attempts at atmosphere would return, so many thought. Thankfully, Ultraviolence exhibits a woman who has both found time better to engage with her subject matters, has found a set of producers to match her ambitions, but most importantly, has learnt to learn whilst not giving a shit.
One thing which is hard to refute is that Del Rey has a personality. Whether you believe it’s fabricated or genuine, her persona offers much to debate and, I feel, engage with. Admittedly, Born To Die wasn’t that great, but I don’t believe it warranted some of the critiques it received. It screamed naivety, but also a sense of ambition. The ear for a tale of melancholy, such as that on “Video Games,” was certainly the angle from which Del Rey presented herself most efficiently, even if it became slightly laborious at times. The biggest issue was in her character development; each female lead was so one dimensional, they felt more like 2D models than real human beings. We were fed a series of women who didn’t reflect the multi-faceted personalities people express, and left much to be desired in terms of Del Rey’s lyrical capabilities.
Ultraviolence offers much of the same, but with added assurance, added detail and more calculated compositions. The production, provided by a team which included the aforementioned Auerbach, as well as Paul Epworth (Adele, Coldplay, Florence and the Machine) and Rick Nowels (Madonna, Nelly Furtado, Dido, Lykke Li), and the instrumentals sound fulsome and totally gorgeous throughout. The dingy-bar feel to “Brooklyn Baby” is well judged and suits Lana’s voice the most successfully, as well as the subject of the matter in question. The inclusion of the low male backing-vocals towards the end of the track similarly add a darker aesthetic to the song, offering a further dynamic to one of the record’s highlights. The more mature hands taken to a track like single “West Coast” similarly reflects the improved quality of the material on this record. The switch to a slower speed for the chorus of the song accentuates the notions of sleaze and seduction, and result in a track abound with edgy character and touches of insanity. Del Rey has commented on the success she felt working with Auerbach and co., and it reflects in the excellent quality of the music surrounding her vocals.
The accusations of Del Rey being an ‘anti-feminist’ spawned from her tales of women, which were weak-willed and at the mercy of their male counterparts. Such attacks have been compounded by the supposed promotion of prostitution expressed in her video for “West Coast.” Unfortunately for her, Ultraviolence won’t do anything to win over any of her critiques. The caricatures of women return, with tracks devoted to expressions of being crazy (“Cruel World”), blindly devoted (“Shades Of Cool,” where she sings how ‘I am one of many’ but ‘I can’t help it/can’t make it better’), an accepted role as a ‘mistress on the side’ (‘Sade Girl’), the self-confessed ‘bitch’ (Money Power Glory’-‘I’m gonna take them for all that they’ve got’) and out-and-out loneliness (‘Old Money’). The lack of sides to her characters does wear thin, and at times unfortunately refuses to allow listeners to engage with the profiles Del Rey is trying to present. “Pretty When You Cry” exhibits a character who is so feeble and incapable of addressing the issues in her relationship that there is no sense of sympathy or the desire to console, just annoyance. The line ‘I’m stronger than all my men/except for you’ invigorates nothing in terms of emotional attachment towards the female lead, instead an attempt as lifeless as our subject to inject something, anything into the track. The lack of depth to the character in the song “Fucked My Way To The Top” similarly means the expressions of bite and ambition the title suggests don’t really come into fruition. A failure which certainly isn’t aided by lines such as the opening ‘life is awesome, I confess/what I do, I do best.’ In an interview with the New York Times, Del Rey noted, ‘I want one of two things…I either want to tell it exactly like the way it was, or I want to envision the future the way I hope it will become. I’m either documenting something or I’m dreaming.’ It is this sense of character building and making her ‘dreams’ something, which include believable characters that continues to need work, and unfortunately is a trait Del Rey has carried forward from her first record and at times seems unable to shake off. That, and the repeated mention of that fucking red dress, which also makes an unfortunate appearance in the “West Coast” video.
However, where, or rather when, I feel Ultraviolence succeeds is the point at which people start to play Del Rey’s game and leave their own agendas behind. Accused of being anti-feminist? States she is ‘more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities.’ Questions over her authenticity have also been highlighted repeatedly, yet she argues her tracks are autobiographical. I feel that Del Rey is more in control than people give her credit for, and that when she is granted this, her songs come to life. In “Money Power Glory,” for all of its issues in terms of content, is packed with an attitude and confidence largely lacking on Born To Die. It smokes its way through its four-minutes-thirty running time, and when Del Rey spits she will ‘take them for all that they got,’ her delivery is dripping with such dangerous assurance that I really believe her. Her lovely cover of Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” dictates a heart-breaking summary of a woman’s plight in love, and although not Del Rey’s own written words, it represents the direction she is hopefully headed with better lyrical capabilities. Her vocals are sumptuous from start to end, as you truly mourn with our narrator. On “Sad Girl,” Del Rey notes how ‘being a bad bitch on the side/it might not appeal to fools like you,’ before reminding us how ‘you haven’t seen my man.’ And she’s right; but her alluring, liberal delivery assures us that he’s worth it, and even more than that, that Del Rey is not doing anything she doesn’t want to be. The switch in the chorus from ‘sad’ to ‘bad’ expresses a slight, if only slight, conflict within one of her characters, but is again something you have to accept Del Rey and her various portrayals to enjoy. She requires indulgence and belief, and when granted, has the potential to deliver.
In the aforementioned interview with the Guardian, Del Rey notes how the video for “West Coast” was ‘100%’ reflective of her life, including the fact it includes ‘hanging out with biker gangs and going off with different guys.’ Critics accuse it of promoting prostitution, yet she argues it’s autobiographical. I think it is this sort of attitude which needs to be taken with Del Rey. Accusations of her being inauthentic, the classic label puppet, as well as of her being an anti-feminist, are perhaps relevant when analysing her impression, but are concepts which must be left behind and accepted as largely irrelevant when approaching her music. She is someone who intentionally divides opinion and offers tracks which are both ridiculous in their content as well as their presentation. At times, these do become laborious; Ultraviolence, much like Born To Die, drags on, and could do with being at least a couple of tracks less, or at minimum varied it up a bit. Regardless, Ultraviolence is to be perceived as a step forward, and a stamp of assurance on Del Rey’s behalf. She is divisive, she is dramatic, and she is hugely debatable. But, for all of its faults, Ultraviolence demands that we understand that it is all on her own terms.
Rating; 3.5/5