Vertimus

My reaction has been exactly the opposite. I didn't care for it upon release and I still don't. For me, it has no center, no subtext, no substance or 'meat'. It certainly isn't a 'folk' record. She said it was what she wanted to do now, and I'm glad for her that she did exactly what she wanted. But it doesn't do a thing for me. CG would be a much, much better choice, especially if slightly remastered and amped up a bit. It had so much potential, music-wise, but they blew it with weak production and badly-recorded and muffled vocals. Still, if it's what LDR wanted, great. I'm glad she did it her way.

I'm glad LDR's performing Joni Mitchell songs--she did a serviceable job on the one verse of 'For Free' she sang in her concert--and dueting with the likes of Joan Baez, but she sounds terrible here.

'White Hot Forever,' if taken literally, certainly doesn't describe the sound of NFR. Since I'm a general non-fan of NFR, another 'similar' album is the last thing I want.

Several people have said the same thing here, including me, over the last several months. The chorus is beautiful and deserved something connected to it that was a lot better. I consider it the nadir of her songwriting on NFR. If I were not a fan of LDR's or didn't know her music at all, and heard HIAB, not only would the mashed-together quality still jump out at me, but I'd think she was an amateur or flash-in-the-pan, not the person who was capable of writing 'Ride,' ‘Yayo,’'Old Money,' 'Black Beauty,' 'Terrence Loves You' and '13 Beaches.' I'm surprised Jack allowed himself to be associated with it. The 'ba-a-bies' and 'oh-who-whos' are so forced and lazy.

Honest and well said. 'CG' is too much in the style of 'Religion,' but with a few highs and lows, fewer dramatic turns.

maxdenhaag Also, I understand that a lot of people regard Venice Bitch as one of her best songs, and while I really like it, I just don't feel like the 6 minutes instrumentals adds much to the song. Just really weirdly recorded guitar licks and the "woah wha-ever, wha-ever, beautiful" or whatever. I'm not going to pretend like this song is a masterpiece just because it's 10 minutes long. It just has this really dry/flat tone that I cannot get my head around, it lacks bass and beats (except on Cinnamon Girl and How To Disappear), but as for the rest of this album it's flat. Think of it this way: what would VB have been without the six minutes of instrumentation? I think Jack or someone said, "It's not much of a song as it is, we'll have to do something to beef it up." I agree 100% about the dry/flat tone.

I agree with both of you. Getting two of the best songs a year in advance didn't help, and then 'Doin' Time' as well. 'Hope' might have been a lot more impactful if it hadn't been released in any form until the album dropped. 'CG' is my favorite but even on it, the production seems lacking--it could have been so such tenser, suspenseful, dramatic and powerful with just a few key production shifts. Instead, I like it best by default. I also like 'Bartender,' but it seems more like an interesting bonus track than a great LDR song. 'Cigarettes & Lollipops' and 'Wild On You' both played randomly on my 'My Top Rated' playlist yesterday, and how much more interesting both seemed to me than all of NFR. I also prefer 'LFL' to NFR, vastly. The world understands, by 2019, as it did by 2015 and 2014, that LDR is not just a pretty flash-in-the-pan pop star who got lucky with 'VG' and who can write clever little pop ditties like 'Radio' and 'National Anthem.' I still feel LDR is motivated to prove to the world that she's a legitimate artiste and is going to continue banging us over the head with that fact until she gets it out of her system---if ever. In the meantime, she's driving a lot of fans away and releasing mediocre albums (but then, I don't see her an an 'album artist' anyway, though of course it would be great if she were). Being dour and severe doesn't make one a better artist, just as writing 'noble songs about social causes' doesn't. To me, she's like a great natural comedian who has decided that comedy is for children, and always will be, and so she's decided to give it up for a 'serious acting career' a la Meryl Streep. LDR can certainly write terrific 'serious' songs like 'Old Money' and '13 Beaches,' great dramatic tracks like 'Cola' and great middle-of-the-road tracks like 'Ride,' but I really miss the uber-light touch, energy and enthusiasm she brought to 'Radio,' 'National Anthem,' 'American,' 'Hollywood's Dead,' 'Making Out,' 'Meet Me in the Pale Moonlight,' 'Hollywood,' 'JFK,' 'AFFA' and so many others. So I see her wasting one of her greatest gifts. I felt NFR rated a 'C' and no better or worse upon release, and I still feel that way.

What about ‘Playing Dangerous,’ where the young pyromaniac seduces the police officer? Maybe it’s been one of her fantasies for a while. ‘Centerist’ she may be, and she may have been raised to be a Democrat like most of NY State, but I have seen conservative elements in her songs and vision since Elizabeth became LDR.

I agree 100%. The 'happiness is a butterfly' part is good, but the other parts are hilariously bad, especially at this point in her career, and BaAy-A-Bee' and 'oooh-hoo-oohhs' are so lazy and pedestrian.

Whatever happened to ‘Talk Like An Answering Machine’?

I like your description/prediction. I would love that. I personally would like something sonically like AFFA or ‘Hollywood,’ as well as ‘JFK’ and most of the Paradise tracks. For me, HM was a little cold, so I would like some of the heated emotions of ‘Cola,’ even if fake/artificial. All art is artifice!

LDR is not necessarily over the ‘artificial’ style of BTD/P. She did say HM was “closer in style to the first two” several times upon its release, and ‘Art Deco’ and ‘Religion,’ and even ‘TLU,’ seem very much like BTD/P tracks, as do a couple on LFL. And then there's CG on NFR. I like the ‘artificial’ style best. I am sure it will come and go on her releases.

I just heard ‘Making Out’ for the first time in a while and it sounded so much more robust, witty, creative and free than most of NFR... I really hope LDR, one day, will want to make fun, clever and slightly satiric pop music again. I hope that that is direction WHF moves towards.

All her albums have problems for me, except for P, which only has the cover of BV I don’t care for. That’s why I don’t think of LDR as an album artist. I like as many songs on each album as I dislike, and I am fine with that, because those I like I really like. Jack just did a so-so job with the production, but the songwriting isn’t uniformly her best either. The lack of bridges doesn’t help. But I do expect her to work again on WHF with Jack, especially due to the critical notices they’ve received, and clearly they get along well.

Absolutely, when Lana was still fun, and producing these half-satiric takes on pop music, like ''Making Out' and MMITPM. I don't mind a little sadness and seriousness, like the BTD title track, 'Ride' and '13 Bitches,' but the too-heavy, too serious, too 'I-take-myself-ultra-seriousness-now' Lana is a drag. To me, it's like she's beating a dead horse on a lot of the songs from the last four albums. At least on WTWWAWWKD, 'God Bless America' and 'BPBP,' she added some levity to the lyrics and music.

That was her best sound, production and persona for me.

I agree. 'Cinnamon' especially sounds thick and muffled, as if it were recorded with a pillow over the mic, unlike, say, TG. I like the arrangement on 'Cinnamon,' but the engineering is awful. Compare it to ‘Hope.’

What about the use of industrial/ ‘thunder’ noises in the ‘Cinnamon’ outro? I loathing they’re a plus, but haven’t seen anyone else mention them.

I wish this song had been on NFR. The ‘Carefree Lana’ persona is the best Lana to me.

Full agree! ‘Meet Me in the Pale Moonlight’ is fantastic. ‘Making Out’ too.

I have always said this is one of the kinds of music she does BEST. ‘Light’ is not necessary bad. LDR is great at straight-up POP music.

Right. We're not talking about which project or song is objectively better, but our own personal impressions of NFR as a whole, sometimes in relation to her recent past. Not only did she say she was burned out, but she said, in regard to the glamour girls and debutants in the Slim Aarons' book, "I'm not that," and mentions how hard it was for them to live up to some impossible social standard of beauty and decorum. Surely that is a reflection on her initial LDR persona, and why she's now presenting herself less glamorously unless she's at a red carpet event or something similar? Presenting herself perhaps as realistically as possible, as close to her real, daily self? I don't like the album cover at all, but for overall aesthetic reasons only. I like the interior shot of her standing against the sail very much.

Full agree about the dangers of the precarious public persona and how it relates to authentic identity. There are examples everywhere in popular culture--from the 1947 'A Double Life' with Ronald Colman, whose character slowly goes mad playing Othello on Broadway, to how Nico and Marianne Faithfull couldn't continue to manage their pop star personas and became junkies for over a decade, to Heath Ledger dying after playing the Joker and admitting that he couldn't rid the character from his psyche. There's also typecasting--which ended the careers of numerous actors, from George Reeves to Jerry Mathers. The Wilson sisters of Heart started out doing exactly what they wanted to do and writing some pretty strong songs from an earthly, lustful female perspective, like 'Devil Delight,' but then got criticized by their own friends for it and immediately buckled down and became whitewashed, politically correct, 'nice' versions of themselves. When that failed, they transformed into even further whitewashed pop princesses, a million miles from their personas ten years earlier--and then, after that collapsed, they blamed the record companies for forcing them to play pop princess roles, as if they had not agreed to it themselves and willfully entered into the bargain. Hence, they're not generally respected today. LDR should have stuck to her guns, is my opinion, though obviously her initial LDR persona was easy to parody and satirize, as SNL cruelly did one week after her singing debacle on their show. And she was, at the same time, being attacked by Lorde for being "inauthentic," and singing about the Hamptons when poor Lorde was still in New Zealand looking for a ride home from a party. Why did LDR buckle under that sort of pressure from Lorde? And then she accused Lorde of stealing the very sound LDR used on BTD for Lorde's own debut. Thus, 'Ultraviolence,' a completely new sound for LDR, but not one I have personally ever found convincing, except on 'West Coast,' 'Old Money,' 'Is This Happiness' and 'Black Beauty.' I think that's a very good point, and I do think it's reflected on both LFL and NFR. To me, LDR is not an album artist in the sense that she makes masterful albums that are cohesive and great from start to finish, like, say Joni Mitchell's classic 'Court & Spark,' the Beatles' 'Abbey Road,' or Tori Amos's 'Boys For Pele.' I expect to like half the songs on a new LDR release at best. Even on my LDR favorite, 'Paradise,' I don't care for the 'Blue Velvet' cover.

I agree as well, though I gave NFR as a whole only a 'C' after two days, and I still feel that way. I lost interest in it immediately. C'mon--it's not a folk record. That's an absurd description. I think I see what she thought she was accomplishing, especially with the title track and the album as a whole, but she failed at that. No one, ever, in the years to come, is going to describe NFR as 'Lana's folk record.' There are a few great and very good songs, but also a lot of tepid, undynamic material that just sort of sits there and goes in circles. 'Hope' is a powerful song in many ways--but is it what more than a handful want from LDR? Except for a few hundred Stans, I don't think so. It's not what I want from her. To me, it's like her 'Sister Morphine,' Marianne Faithfull's failed commercial attempt at an 'artistic' song that came at the end of her 60s pop career. Like so many pop stars before her, especially female pop stars, from Marianne Faithfull to Joni Mitchell and Madonna and on, I think LDR started out happily producing songs with a broad range, from the BTD title track (which I love) to 'Radio' and 'National Anthem,' but then forces in the industry, including critics, male pop stars and female competitors, snidely said, 'Look at her--another disposable pretty girl pop tart, blindly enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame, thinking she's all that," and when those words reached LDR's ears, instantly she did the same thing that Faithfull, Mitchell, the Wilson sisters from Heart, Madonna and others have done: she decided that she will prove to the world that she's an artiste--not a silly flash in the pan--and with a vengeance! And so the playful, seductive LDR of 'Cola,' 'American,' 'Summertime Sadness' and 'Diet Mountain Dew' vanished, and the 'serious,' spooky LDR of 'Money, Power, Glory' and 'Ultraviolence' appeared. And that's led us right to NFR, after a detour through some of the songs on LFL, which were weak attempts to create commercial pop songs again. Do I think she's sure of the road she's on, and has been sure? No. I think she's had nothing but anxiety about her public persona, who she is as an artist and where she's going since releasing 'Paradise.' But this is certainly what can happen when, within 12 years, you adopt the name and think of yourself as Elizabeth Woolrich Grant, Sparkle Jump Rope Queen, May Jailer, Lana Del Ray, Lana Del Rey and God only knows what else. I'm not blaming her for anything--I'm saying this is what can happen when you mess around with your identity and persona. We see actors reporting it all the time--Joaquin Phoenix just said it,again, like Heath Ledger before him--that playing the Joker for a few months really messed with his mind.