Born to Lie

Lana Del Rey, born under the sign of Gemini, is symbolically represented by two people-- in this case, maybe more. (Hell, it's appropriate to wonder about who's really singing here. "Lana Del Rey" isn't even her real name).

There are a few different people present on this album. They all have a common undercurrent, a thread, but the sense of fragmentation persists, making it hard to listen to any one song all the way through-- they all seem about a minute too long, with one possible exception.

So what's the roll call? Well, most of the personae on "Ready to Die" have a distinctly 1960's feel-- the early part of the decade. Del Rey's image on the cover is a major hint in this direction-- she's telling us that this is from when dissipated (key word #1) girls would lounge on hardwood floors, smoking cigarettes, and wish they were starring in black-and-white French films. The proto-Tumblr generation, maybe-- a kind of hollowness that seeks for romanticism, and if it can't find it, settles for the romanticizing of hollowness itself. (It's too spoiled to be true weltschmerz, though. It hasn't even found its way out of the suburbs yet).

So with that in mind, watch in wonder as Del Rey tours through all the components of this particular slice of Americana, but never gets them to cohere. This (for me, at least), is where the interest and the aggravation of the album are located. This is a collection of phrases, not poems. Del Rey has got a talent for finding the little hints and pieces of the gestalt, but can't quite put it all together into one big, satisfying package.

I mean, for the most part, we've seen these pieces before. The biblical, doomstruck lust of "Blue Jeans" has been P. J. Harvey's stomping ground for years. The drunk-on-wine, lounging-at-the-poolside languor. Her slightly exaggerated, California-girl sighs and enunciations (which clash oddly with her British pronunciation of "vitamin" on "Radio"). The corny chirpings that make you wonder if Debbie Reynolds might not have had a granddaughter we didn't know about. Little stylistic choices, most of which seem to get picked up and dropped at random.

The result is a kind of maddening collage of all the girls who would namedrop Nabokov for one reason or another (her not mentioning "Lolita" at some point or points in this album is almost inconceivable, and sure enough, "Off to the Races" has her murmuring "light of my life, fire of my loins"), mixed with a healthy dollop of Nancy Sinatra, with some bemusingly anachronistic dancefloor-DJ touches. Imagine Charlotte Gainsbourg produced by Timbaland. (There's even a spoken-French interlude on "Carmen").

I had mentioned earlier that there's one place where this particular construction comes together and holds. Of course I'm talking about "Video Games", where Del Rey's affected, distant delivery suddenly finds itself a tune and texture good enough to make it transcend itself. The essential fakeness of Del Rey's whole attitude works in this song, as we're invited to picture a girl making maudlin, sweeping love-declarations to herself while her boyfriend, incurable romantic that he is, drinks beer and plays video games. She's off in the corner, congratulating herself on her affair for the ages-- "this is my idea of fun, playing video games", she says, fooling no one-- while he is completely unaware of his emotional makeover at her hands. On the rest of the songs, the guy is a figment of Del Rey's melodramatic imagination-- he's a bad boy, a rebel, a dangerously sexy pegged-jeans-and-Lucky-Strike character-- in other words, he doesn't exist. On "Video Games", he's a real person, probably not too interesting, drives a car, plays pool and darts, someone who is filtered by the singer's imagination, not created by it. The difference is conspicuous.

Maybe that's the key to the puzzle of how to make a basically fake attitude convince us of its sincerity. Del Rey is at her least convincing when she's selling it straight, acting as if these hot times and forbidden schoolgirl stirrings were the whole truth of the matter. What's far more interesting (at least to me) is when we get clues that the singer is making the whole thing up, that these are the songs born of a girl with a rather humdrum life, that have been draped in lipstick and romanticism just to make the occurrences more interesting and livable. I can't believe that Del Rey's character stayed at the Chateau Marmont in the 60's, but I can believe that she wishes she had.

So if I were to offer advice to Ms. Del Rey I would say: don't try to trick us-- make us complicit in your escapism! We're all willing to join you in the Los Angeles of your imagination. Just keep an eye on the dreary realities that you're singing to get away from-- it will make the reverie all the more appealing.