Sportscruiser

Kim Petras hasn’t done anything remotely interesting since the Halloween EP. Catering to the masses is costing the edge she had. I really don’t like this song but Nicki did the best she could with it.

American Whore 1. Cartwheel 2. Mother 3. Come Into My Bedroom 4. American Whore 5. Teenage Diary of a Girl 6. Princess/Divisive 7. Fucked Up My Story 8. Sidepiece at 33 9. God’s a Charlatan (I don’t care if this is the official lyric or not, it eats) 10. Not About Someone To Love Me Anymore

Her debut album is strong enough to set her apart from most of debut only artists, I think.

Oh I’m very much aware of her activism and importance in the music industry but I still think making other people audition for you is a bit too much; I have a big problem with diva-ish celebrities not named Mariah Carey.

I love the lighting and the color palettes but the rest… Also, that interview makes Joan Baez look like a total asshole. Not her acting like she’s Simon Cowell and people have to audition for her

I’d argue Ocean contains more NFR melodies/samples (A&W circles back to NFR title track, Fingertips/Bartender, Let The Light In/Love Song, etc) and references (Sweet tracing back to The Greatest’s line of “doing nothing at all”, etc). Chemtrails and NFR have similar production values but their themes are inherently different: NFR has a more widespread, bird’s eye view of the world in which Lana is sometimes a mere spectator/narrator of everything around her (much like she was already being in the back half of LFL) while Chemtrails turns inward and leans heavily on the Midwest country-folk aesthetic and sonic sensibilities. NFR is grandiose and majestic while Chemtrails is shy, timid and more introspective. It’s too easy to dismiss the latter as a collection of B-sides when in reality there’s a clear purpose and thematic approach in Chemtrails that an album like, say, Blue Banisters doesn’t quite possess - that purpose is to me strong enough to distinguish itself from what she accomplished with NFR which is why it’s always been strange to me that so many fans insist on both sounding the same. I just for the life of me can’t see it. Its also diminishing of Chemtrails importance in her discography. Chemtrails traces the very first impulses in Lana’s of-late tendencies in delving deep into her past (White Dress alone is a testament to that) while also manifesting a very anti-fame/desire to escape everything mantra that NFR quite simply didn’t even touch. Regardless of when each track was recorded and/or written, both albums feel very distinct to me - as practically all Lana albums are in my opinion. Blue Banisters is my least favorite precisely because it’s the one Lana album that is decidedly more fragmented and unfocused, deliberately so. With Ocean she’s made it obvious that she wanted to touch every single one of her last eras as far as sonority goes which could make for an abrasive and chaotic experience but that ultimately succeeds because of the specific songwriting and lyrical concept.

This is abhorrent.

NFR is indie rock with surf rock elements here and there. It’s quite cohesive and sunny-sounding throughout. Chemtrails leans heavily on indie folk and its sonority suggests a more autumnal aesthetic. That the GP still manages to affirm these two albums sound the exact same is completely mind boggling to me. Their themes are different and the soundscapes diverge to different genres (although sharing similar sensibilities) but people took Jack Antonoff producing both albums and WAH sampling HTD and ran with it.

Oh Say Can You See

I love her to pieces but I just can’t force myself to believe she hasn’t heard at least Renaissance or some other mainstream popular releases. She’s been away from social media, not from the world.

I reeeeeally don’t wanna get my hopes up for the Grammys but A&W possibly being nominated is something I can see happening. AOTY nom not so much.

Her instagram feed is rancid and I’m not sure I like her work (from what I’ve seen online) but let’s hope. At the end of the day, Nadia Lee Cohen will remain undefeated as the best photographer who’s ever worked with Lana. I wish she did something with Petra Collins… Petra’s a huge fan of her.

Who’s the photographer?

No, it’s not. I wish people stopped discrediting the last 3 tracks as “bonus tracks”. Thematically they all make sense in the concept of the album of getting in and out of the tunnel. Taco Truck in particular is the epitome of that - Lana is repurposing the very song she always said it’s meant to listen to to vibe and drive to and putting at the end of an album where she distilled immense amounts of trauma; it makes perfect sense as the closer.

She’s really eating this era omfg.

OMFG.

My interpretation is that she’s evoking her father’s protection by a grander force (in this case in the figure of her grandfather) to keep him safe to do what he loves (which is fishing for sharks - which by itself can be literal or even metaphoric in the sense that he’s in the wilderness overcoming a species that’s stronger than him). That she chooses to juxtapose that with her own personal struggles with the way she’s perceived gives me the idea that she too longs for protection while she’s doing what she loves (singing, writing, living) without the fear of being misinterpreted or minimized in the process - her protection in this case comes in the form of the three loved ones she lost and talks about in other songs, poetically incarnated in three white butterflies. It seems they’re two different subjects altogether but she ties them rather interestingly.

A&W Grandfather Paris, Texas Taco Truck x VB Fingertips Kintsugi Peppers Candy Necklace Margaret The Grants Jon Batiste Interlude Let The Light In Fishtail Sweet Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd Judah Smith Interlude I love all of them and this is definitely a Top 3 record for me, only behind Honeymoon and NFR.

The Kintsugi - Fingertips - Paris Texas - Grandfather run is the most existential and esoteric Lana has ever been. I’m still as floored as ever.

I see some of y’all still displaying copious amounts of tasteless copy-paste one liners about how Kintsugi and/or Fingertips are boring and should have stayed as poems - as if Lana’s writing hasn’t at least since 2017 been merging the two art forms consistently. Between this and the anti-piano brigade… it’s a tragedy. I see nothing Greek in it

Sweet and Kintsugi keep rising in my overall rank. Beautiful, harrowing pieces. I love her so much.

Ocean Blvd isn’t meant to be or feel immediate: it’s meant for one to sit with it for a long, long time. It keeps growing and growing. The people who keep reducing it to a piano album are just stuck in BTD/UV nostalgia and can’t consume music that isn’t short or beat driven - or both.

Fashionably late in answering this but this is an interesting comment. I do wonder if Lana’s refusal to play the promotional game has led us to believe she’s overall lazy as an artist and incapable to conjure concept albums regardless of whether she promotes them as such or not. In my opinion, Lana as of right now wouldn’t make sure to go out of her way to say this is a concept album the same way most musicians do when they have a concept project in their hands. This album is clearly narrative-driven and its structure does obey to a certain narrative of getting in and out of a tunnel: The Grants anticipate this moment (“I’m doing the hard stuff, I’m doing my time”) before the title track and Sweet display her own anxieties as she goes further into her memories and past (fear of being forgotten, the anxiety of being in a relationship and wanting to know about its longevity, as she affirms to being someone deserving of that). From A&W forward she gets into the tunnel, to harrowing (A&W), eerie (the interludes), dark (Candy Necklace) and devastating (Kintsugi + Fingertips) effects as she gets more and more lost in the misty forests of her own traumas. From Paris, Texas forward it feels like she’s coming out of the tunnel (“I just needed two seconds to be me”) which culminates in Margaret, a very bittersweet moment where, as some review points, she’s a spectator of joy rather than a receptor. And then the Fishtail/Peppers/Taco Truck coda where she’s finally embracing the recklessness and devil-may-care side of her that so many people (her mother and some past relationships) made her feel bad and inferior about. Ending the album with “signing off bang bang kiss kiss” feels like a major “fuck off, peace out” ride into the sunset. Who knows where she goes from here - at the end of the day, it’s her path to forge and her trauma seems to be left behind. This tracklist feels so meticulous and incredibly deliberate in narrative and musicianship that it kind of feels unfair to discredit it as “non-conceptual” because Lana is too “lazy” to do something like that. Just because she’s not being overly promotional about it, doesn’t mean she’s a lazy artist. The fact that she poured so much of herself in this record and formatted it in such an intriguing and confounding fashion, makes me believe she’s anything but lazy.

Sweet is amazing. Sorry for doubting ya

Ultraviolence!