Chemtrails Over The Country Club
There’s a track on *Chemtrails Over the Country Club*—Lana Del Rey’s sixth full-length album and the follow-up to 2019’s *Norman F\*\*\*\*\*g Rockwell!*—that should have been heard earlier. “Yosemite” was originally written for 2017’s *Lust for Life*, but, in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that year, Del Rey revealed the song was “too happy” to make the cut. Its appearance is a neat summation of where you can expect to find the singer here. Total serenity might not have been achieved just yet, but across these 11 tracks, Del Rey, along with returning producer Jack Antonoff, finds something close to peace of mind, reflected in a softer, more intimate and pared-back sound. “Wild at Heart,” “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” and “Yosemite,” for example, all brim with (self-)acceptance. Returning to ”Yosemite” hints at something else, too: an artist looking back to make her next step forward. *Chemtrails* is scattered with references to its predecessors, from the “Venice Bitch”-reminiscent outro of the title track to “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” which might be seen as a companion piece to 2012 single “Ride.” Then there are the tracks that could easily have appeared on previous albums (“Tulsa Jesus Freak” wouldn’t be out of place on 2014’s dark-edged *Ultraviolence*) and lyrics we’ve heard before (“Dance Till We Die,” for example, references “Off to the Races” from her debut album *Born to Die*, while “Yosemite” calls back to the “candle in the wind” of *NFR!*\'s “Mariners Apartment Complex”). Del Rey’s MO has always been to tweak and refine—rather than reinvent—her sound, bringing her ever closer to where she wants to be. *Chemtrails*, however, is the first time she’s brought so much of her past into that process. As for where this album takes her? Somewhat unexpectedly towards country and folk inspired by the Midwest, rather than Del Rey’s beloved California; on “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” Del Rey pines after Arkansas. *Chemtrails Over the Country Club* makes no reference to the global pandemic in which it was partly created and released. And yet, amid a year of isolation, it was perhaps logical that one of this generation’s best songwriters would look inward. Here, Del Rey’s panoramic examination of America is replaced with something altogether more personal. On opener “White Dress,” she reflects on “a simpler time” when she was “only 19… Listening to White Stripes/When they were white hot/Listening to rock all day long.” It’s a time, more specifically, before she was famous. Nostalgia for it ebbs and flows as Del Rey’s vocals crack and strain, but any regret is short-lived. “I would still go back/If I could do it all again… Because it made me feel/Made me feel like a god.” Fame—and its pitfalls—are things Del Rey is more intimately acquainted with than most, and are a constant source of conflict on *Chemtrails*. But, as on “White Dress,” disillusionment most often turns to defiance. This reaches its peak by the album’s midpoint, “Dark but Just a Game,” an outstanding exploration of just how dangerous fame can be—if you let it. Where Del Rey was once accused of glamorizing the deaths of young artists who came before her, here, she emancipates herself from that melancholic mythology. “We keep changing all the time/The best ones lost their minds/So I’m not gonna change/I’ll stay the same,” she sings in an uplifting major-chord chorus that seems to look ahead to a better future. That sunnier disposition doesn’t dispel Del Rey’s unease with fame altogether, but she’s only too aware of what it’s brought her. For starters, the women she’s met along the way—paid tribute on the album’s final three, country-inspired tracks. “Breaking Up Slowly,” a meditation on the tempestuous relationship between Tammy Wynette and George Jones, was written with country singer-songwriter Nikki Lane (who toured with Del Rey in 2019), and Weyes Blood and Zella Day join Del Rey on the final track to cover Joni Mitchell’s “For Free.” On “Dance Till We Die,” meanwhile, the singer celebrates women in music who have come before her—and acted as guiding lights. “I’m covering Joni and I’m dancing with Joan,” she sings. “Stevie’s calling on the telephone/Court almost burned down my home/But god, it feels good not to be alone.” That same track may see her revisit her woes (“Troubled by my circumstance/Burdened by the weight of fame”), but it also finds her returning to an old coping mechanism. Just as on *Lust for Life*’s “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” and *NFR!*’s “Happiness is a butterfly,” it’s time to dance those woes away. “I\'ll keep walking on the sunny side/And we won\'t stop dancin\' till we die.”
Lana Del Rey’s sixth album dials back the grandiosity in favor of smaller, more intimate moments. It carries a roaming spirit of folk and Americana without losing the romantic melodrama of her best work.
Lana Del Rey's follow-up to 2019's critically acclaimed Norman Fucking Rockwell! is similar, but stuck in that album's shadow.
The star follows up her career-high 'Norman Fucking Rockwell!' with a stunning album that aches with meditations on fame and romance
Chemtrails Over the Country Club sees Lana De Rey lean further into the sounds of sunny, ‘70s California and poignant preoccupations with glamour and high society.
The singer/songwriter, who relishes the dramatic, reminds listeners that it’s all about her on her seventh studio album.
In 'Chemtrails Over the Country Club,' Lana Del Rey looks beyond the San Gabriel Mountains on her most introspective album yet.
The confidence feels diminished, the rich production of its predecessor replaced by something thinner, sadder.
A great storyteller, Del Rey consistently delivers the who, what, where and when
During a period that's tailor-made for navel-gazing and nostalgia, Lana Del Rey has produced yet another timely record for us to brood over.
Lana Del Rey's 2019 album Norman Fucking Rockwell! represented a new level of artistry, as the singer moved further from the disaffected Hollywood starlet persona of her early recordings into something more restrained, subtle, and mature.
When Lana Del Rey burst onto the scene in 2011, critics had a hard time buying her diamond-encrusted sad-girl shtick. Her 2012 major label d...
I would bet that Lana Del Rey keeps a diary: it is often the people who do who are able to see the richness of their own life - and of being alive in its wider sense.
It’s difficult to think of an artist who had more of an ascent to critical, commercial, and conversational acclaim than Lana Del Rey did in the 2010s. Her debut album, Born to Die, smashed sales records upon release in early 2012 but was met with a more-than-lukewarm hesitancy from critics.
Lana Del Rey’s continued quest for minimalism sits utterly at odds with the overwhelming majority of her peers. While the neon legacy of PC Music
On this strikingly assured seventh album, Del Rey reflects on fame, love, loneliness and the solidarity of fellow female songwriters
Lana Del Rey returns with Chemtrails Over The Country Club, an often beautiful, perfectly-assembled record that's almost too pristine
The album is a compelling, if minor, chapter in the artist’s ongoing saga of fatalistic romanticism.
Anti-feminist, glamorizer of abuse, right-wing sympathizer, closet racist, cultural appropriator.
Chemtrails Over the Country Club by Lana Del Rey album review by Jahmeel Russell. The full-length is out today via Polydor/Interscope
Her usual themes of nostalgia, troubled fame, and ne’er-do-well lovers are trotted out again – but the melody writing is stronger than ever
Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over The Country Club review: It was such a scene / and I felt seen
Lana Del Rey may have it all – but was it worth it? It's the question at the heart of her sumptuous record that conceals as much as it tells
US singer stands tall as pop’s most singular talent with new ‘country folk’ album