Early in Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Beneath Ocean Blvd, Lana Del Rey highlights a sermon from megachurch pastor-to-the-stars Judah Smith. In essentially the most Del Rey vogue, it was clearly recorded on her cellphone throughout a service — you may hear her and a buddy’s giggles bump up within the foreground, above Smith’s projecting voice and a piano instrumental that retains it shifting. Smith proselytizes about love and lust, studying from the Ebook of Psalms. His presence feels strikingly superfluous within the context of Del Rey’s fairly heavy ninth album (particularly whenever you assume too exhausting on the ickiness of his former views on abortion and homosexuality). However the way in which he matches into her imaginative and prescient turns into clearer in his last two strains:
“I used to assume my preaching was largely about you,” he says in a conspiratorial tone to what’s doubtless a room of lots of, if not 1000’s, of congregants. ”And also you’re not gonna like this, however I’m gonna inform you the reality: I’ve found my preaching is generally about me.”
The core of Ocean Blvd is Del Rey attempting to get a better take a look at herself, flipping the story as we’ve got come to know (and perhaps even misperceive) about what she’s attempting to inform us. By means of tales of her household, a failed relationship, her conflicting need of being each seen and hidden, Del Rey exposes extra than simply who she is, however why she is who she is.
Household is a key theme on Ocean Blvd, with Del Rey processing grief, loneliness, and heartbreak in her familial historical past. She fittingly kicks off the entire thing with “The Grants,” a somber reflection on loss and grief that she delivers with the assistance of Melodye Perry, Pattie Howard, and Shikena Jones, who all appeared within the 2013 documentary about backup singers, 20 Ft From Stardom. On “Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of My Father Whereas He’s Deep-Sea Fishing,” she ponders the afterlife, providing a prayer of safety for her father, Rob Grant, from her late grandfather. “Kintsugi” tackles the horrific expertise of watching a cherished one die.
Songs like the wonderful “A&W” — named in reference to the phrase “American whore,” not the basis beer — and “Fingertips” are two sides of the identical life-storytelling coin. Every ponders sexual growth, an estranged mom, and the harrowing actuality of carrying trauma deep into maturity. Whereas “A&W” casts the highlight on the media and the singer’s companions, “Fingertips” has her speaking to a mirror whereas seeking to lean on her beloved father and siblings, Charlie and Caroline, for assist. “Will I die or will I get to that 10-year mark?/The place I beat extinction of telomeres?/And if I do, will you be there with me? Father, sister, brother?”
There’s an undercurrent of heartbreak beating beneath the floor, particularly within the entrance half. (Del Rey put up one single billboard selling the album in none apart from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Notably, that’s the town the place her ex-boyfriend lives.) “It’s not about havin’ somebody to like me anymore,” she bluntly states on “A&W.” She doesn’t go full scorched earth, as a substitute opting to reclaim her personal magic on “Candy” or celebrating the present of readability: “When you already know, you already know/It’s time, it’s time to go,” she sings on the dazzling, subdued monitor.
Within the midst of of her self-evaluation, Del Rey can’t assist however look to her musical previous as effectively. Songs just like the slithering “Sweet Necklace” characteristic the coquette supply from her 2012 debut Born to Die and its Ultraviolence-era follow-up that made it clear she was on a musical path in contrast to every other we have been experiencing on the time. 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! will get a number of nods throughout the venture: The title monitor is interpolated on “A&W,” the opening line of “Cinnamon Lady” opens up “Sweet Necklace,” and the “VB” in “Taco Truck x VB” stands, in fact, for “Venice Bitch,” with its psychedelic freakout closing out the album altogether.
Sonically, Ocean Blvd performs out like an elevated tackle what she achieved on Born to Die: the kind of anachronistic fusion of Sixties beat poetry, Seventies FM piano pop, and extra present rap and dance music manufacturing that solely Del Rey can pull off. The album is sort of strikingly quiet, compared to a lot of her work, leaning largely on the piano for a lot of the songs. Featured artists Jon Batiste and Riopy supply their extraordinary abilities on their respective spots, giving a lounge really feel as Del Rey lets her stream-of-consciousness reflections cleared the path.
The masterful, exhilarating “A&W” provides a “Venice Bitch”-style second-half switch-up, pivoting to an attractive rap with a entice beat. The again half strikes into shocking territory, due to the entice snare and synths of “Fishtail” and an look from Tommy Genesis on “Peppers,” which samples Genesis’ monitor “Angelina.” The latter options a few of the most peak Del Rey strains: “Me and my boyfriend take heed to the Chili Peppers” earlier than later sneaking in “My boyfriend examined constructive for Covid/It don’t matter/We’ve been kissin’/So no matter he has, I’ve/I can’t cry.”
A few of Del Rey’s darkest ideas seep into the lyrics, however essentially the most radical factor of her songwriting on this venture is how a lot hope she lets sneak in. The grief is met with a imaginative and prescient of heaven that sees her reuniting with these misplaced relations and associates at some point. On “Margaret,” she sings about how her buddy and frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff met his fiancée Margaret Qualley. She flips the resigned readability of “Paris, Texas” on its head within the refrain: “When you already know, you already know,” she sings, nodding at the fantastic thing about anticipating the surprising on either side of that phrase’s that means. (Oddly, that is the second time in Antonoff’s manufacturing profession that an artist he’s working with is so moved by his love story that they write a complete music about it.) The Father John Misty-featuring “Let the Mild In” strikes like a reminiscence of the carefree, loved-up lady she mourns on songs like “Fishtail” and “A&W.” However its brightness is likely to be an open invitation for that lady to come back again at any time when she’s prepared.
With all of the NFR! references on the album, the query on many minds already appears to be whether or not or not this or any work might high that masterpiece in her discography. However that query is futile. What she has accomplished since — together with Chemtrails Over the Nation Membership and Blue Banisters — has confirmed to be a outstanding growth on the inventive imaginative and prescient she laid out on that album, one which places her in a inventive class all her personal. In preaching to herself, she has unlocked the kind of artwork her listeners will maintain pricey for a lifetime.
