ByDayAnother

Fuck. That snippet, FLOORED me.

Every album since LFL has been delayed, (despite still releasing almost an album per year), with consistent lack of clear communication and projects falling through since the Honeymoon era (arguably UV - remember there was a PWIC video?). To quote Dark But Just A Game: “I’m not gonna change, I’ll stay the same”. There’s nothing to figure out here people. Until there’s a pre-order, nothing is real. The album will come when it comes - maybe this year, and probably not next week. Save your energy, enjoy COTCC and a mini EP’s worth of new songs that together are but a few months old! Pre-release Lana gonna Pre-release Lana, and we will stan when it’s released. Simple! (i will say though, I would like the recent tracks to be left off if it’s being released later rather than sooner…)

Born songwriter, not only does the work never stop flowing, she gradually begins to play with and deconstruct her own writing practice starting with West Coast and now even more embodied with recent work like Textbook. She truly has a loyal muse when it comes to musical composition.

I think it’s delayed and she drops approximate dates to keep buzz going, she relies on an invested and dedicated fan base, not mainstream sales. Manipulative, but smart from a point of view of longevity by keeping those who they know will buy the music anyway wanting more. In that sense, Lana becomes invested in long-term by a consistent audience, not facilitated by the ever changing zeitgeist. I have a feeling she and her management prefer (and I think in the long-term, rightly so) to lean into her status as a Great American Songwriter instead of conventional promotional strategies. She’s an album artist, and thereby she is marketed on her (rightful and long overdue) critical acclaim and, I’ll just say it, prestige. It would be ridiculous at this point for her brand to be marketed any other (more thirst-quenching) way. Not to mention that she very clearly runs the show, almost always has, and I think she should be trusted (except ironically with more objective things like dates ?) with her vision, and her management knows that. They’re thinking a decade or two down the line, not just next year career-wise. Sorry to the hopeful. ? I just hope she hasn’t backtracked direction-wise in terms of recently evolving compositional style lyrically and musically and reverts to more conventional writing, that’s my main concern, Chemtrails is only getting better with time and repeated listening and it hasn’t been long. But I will be very happy to be wrong.

Text Book still on repeat daily since its release for me. The controversy confuses me - lyrically she’s been writing in a very modernist style since NFR (itself lending well to her consistently visual lyrical style), which includes stream-of-consciousness descriptions of a moment’s experience whether abstract or physical. She mentions the protest simply to paint a picture, as well as locating the song in time. She might as well be describing the light falling on a building at that same moment, though naturally all these separate images act as conceptual dynamos that can branch off into their own associations.

I hope the entire album is this stream of consciousness structureless oeuvre, so refreshing honestly

Having worked with a producer for my own music who nevertheless had a massive input creatively, they followed my directions and I had a final say. Knowing Lana, down to how she personally labours with the mixing, she’ll have a similar creative control. We get and hear what she wants, whether it comes from her or the producer comes up with something she responds well to. It’s so weird how people think the producer is the be all and end all.

I think the ugliness of the selfie covers is a conscious choice, forcing people to focus on the music and the writing, which I can’t argue with strategically - they are near-objectively poor images of course, but I think she just feels done with the promotional cycle bullshit, as nice as it is for us to experience, it clearly doesn’t gel with her personality or priorities. She was slated for so long for leaning on presentation and aesthetics (a BIZARRE criticism from every angle), so she’s deliberately throwing in the towel on that front. And hey, I’m down, I just hope to God it ain’t the album cover, though I’ve never liked any of her album covers since BTD. NFR was an amazing image, ruined by the obnoxious Pop Art typeface and its conceptual and aesthetic incongruence with the cover’s painterly reference to the real Norman Rockwell. I also want her to do a textless cover at some point.

Remember when Lana said in the lead-up to LFL that it was for us, her fans? Something to that effect anyway. Anyway, in my opinion, that *was* her throwback to Born To Die-esque sounds (more explicitly trip-hop and electronic, despite its latter half), that was her attempted fan service, and whilst the songs individually were great, it was her least cohesive album, and the fans reacted accordingly. She’s not going back, and I’m so happy for her to still be growing ten years into her career. Anyway, Text Book is on repeat, it’s stunning, have been writing lots of poetry to it. Lyrically WW is incredible, but it’s actually my least favourite of the three - it just isn’t as dynamic as the other two songs. BB is legitimately risky, changing tempo without percussion. I love her leaning into these more disruptive compositions, I want her to keep pushing it towards something eventually unrecognisable.

FUCK I love it, I take back my disdain for the name, brb, painting my bannisters blue

So... are there two albums coming? There’s no way, right? This is Lana we’re talking about.

I interpreted “it wasn’t quite what I meaned” as a her ambivalent response to the offer of a drink in the previous line with her being an alcoholic, possibly a “mean drunk”. She rejected the offer, but she didn’t want to.

This is the first of her records where I consistently listen to the whole thing back to front - not that I didn’t before, it’s just that I would obsess over and settle on individual songs (or a group of them), but this feels like it has to be listened to as a singular statement.

Re: “country”, her album descriptions have never been accurate, I wouldn’t take them too seriously. Whilst I love her dark, cavernous trip-hop work of yore, I totally trust her continuing with a more organic sound. And if so, I’d love for her to go down the route of Tennis’ latest album, whilst pushing herself even more with the structural complexities of West Coast, DBJAG and DTWD. Every album I’ve worried “this is probably gonna be the one where her schtick runs thin”, but it doesn’t, she delivers every time. LFL is certainly her least cohesive if not weakest record, it has a couple of clunkers, but there are multiple songs that are individually great. Anyway, musically, I trust her.

I’m impressed with how quickly my brain repressed what I just saw.

She didn’t delay it - when I saw that rumour I INSTANTLY believed it though, I mean you can’t possibly put it past her. ?

Anyone have a link for pics of the booklet etc? Been looking everywhere...

Exactly.

(Album review)

She DID that. FUCK. Where to begin and where to end, I am so proud of her. FUCK.