Lana Del Rey review: Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Lana Del Rey: Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
- Lana Del Rey
- Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
- ★★★★☆
There was a period when Lana Del Rey seemed to release a new album every second week. Her quality control never dipped, though the sheer scale of her output would over time desensitise even her most ardent fans. This could be seen with the lukewarm response to Blue Banisters, among her best-ever records but one which felt like an afterthought when it arrived seven months after Chemtrails Over The Country Club.
By Del Rey standards, the 18-month gap between Blue Banister and her latest, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, constitutes a sabbatical of Guns N' Roses-esque proportions, then. In the interim she hasn’t quite pressed reset. Hers is still a post-Twin Peaks milieu of last orders weirdness and femme fatale types with secrets darker than their eyeliner.
But her ninth LP nonetheless feels like the start of something new for the singer. At 77 minutes it’s her longest yet. It is also her least urgent. There are moments of tension and drama– such as the seven-minute electro-folk steamroller A&W (produced with her regular collaborator Jack Antonoff).
The overall tone, though, is pensive and, even for lifelong wallflower Del Rey, aggressively introverted – notwithstanding big name collaborations with Father John Misty, Syml and Grammy-winning jazzman Jon Batiste. She is a ghostly half-presence on 'The Grants', a ballad that doubles as peace offering to her family ( her real name is Elizabeth Grant). “Do you think there’s still a chance for us?,” she croons – suggesting that journalists and fellow pop stars aren’t the only people with whom Del Rey has feuded.
Her family receives a further namecheck on 'Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of My Father While He's Deep-Sea Fishing' – another woozy barnstormer that surfs an electric languidness.
Del Rey has said that she wanted her latest LP to be “effortless”. And for it to stand as a counterpoint to perhaps her finest album to date, 2019’s Norman F****** Rockwell. That project brimmed with pop pay-offs. Here, it’s all about the small moments. Melodies buried under the gauze, choruses that pass so quietly and quickly they are at first easy to miss.
Ocean Boulevard is a subterranean rollercoaster ride, blurred at the edges, orbiting a great gooey heart of darkness – and with the assumption that the audience will take a moment to adjust to its slowly unspooling tempos. Del Rey diehards will love it . For everyone else, this is a record to be approached on its terms and with an understanding that in pop, as in life, the best things take time.
