Jeanne Dielman

Is that John Waters?! OMG. And the Marilyn wig

Fingertips is giving Björk circa Vespertine. It’s also become my currently favourite song off of the new album. A career highlight (well, Ocean Blvd has plenty of them anyway!).

Exactly. And didn’t Antonoff pretty much confirm that in a recent interview? I think it was the Rolling Stone UK one. Taco Truck could be a hint. A looser, sultrier style (first half of Taco Truck), mixed with surprising structure (the transition and change of style) and dark brooding atmosphere (the closing seconds of the track with the unsettling piano could be a nod to the heavier foreboding piano on Candy Necklace and the JB interlude which were the last songs to be recorded for the album apart from Margaret). I also find it quite bizarre that during the album photoshoot she told Neil that she wanted to include « Pearl watch me on ring a bell psycho lifeguard » on the album title, yet none of these words have appeared on the lyrics of any of the album tracks at all. And these were supposed to be the titles of five brand new songs!

Lol! They really tried it, poor things.

That’s because Antonoff could never play the piano as well as Batiste, so I understand their frustration.

Vile misogynistic trashbags.

120k first week sales (second best in her career so far behind UV) for her longest, least accessible and most challenging album to date.

I’m obsessed with Candy Necklace, Jon Batiste Interlude, Kintsugi and Fingertips.

He only counts for AOTY. I think he’ll give it a 7, but an 8 isn’t out of the question as long as he digs Side D (probably not, lol).

I hope that they will upload LA Times’ score, because they still haven’t added the review of Miley’s album, lol. In fact, the last review on MC is the one for SZA’s album last December. Perhaps we should spam LA Times’ music critic. Poor thing needs to understand that such delays are unacceptable.

Yes, they just added the Exclaim, BPM, The Observer and musicOMH reviews. They haven’t added the LA Times and Record Collector reviews yet. EDIT: Strangely enough, MC hasn’t uploaded LA Times’ review of Miles Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation either, and that one was released two weeks ago.

Exclaim raves about the record! 90/100! (it counts for MC!) https://exclaim.ca/amparticle/lana_del_rey_did_you_know_that_theres_a_tunnel_under_ocean_blvd_review

No, they haven’t updated it yet.

Vulture’s review. It’s a rave. https://www.vulture.com/2023/03/lana-del-rey-ocean-blvd-review.html Metacritic used to count their music reviews, but apparently not anymore.

I haven’t posted my full thoughts on the album yet, but this is her strangest and most unconventional album to date. It took me three listens to start grasping her overall vision and intentions, and I still think that I’ll have to revisit it several times in order to understand it better. It kind of feels like a culmination of her entire discography in terms of themes and inspirations - it shares some similarities with LFL, I suppose - while it introduces new elements (the gospel/background vocalists on the first two tracks; the stream-of-consciousness tracks in the middle; the unhinged foreboding energy of the exquisite instrumentals of the interludes; Jon Batiste’s extraordinary piano solo; the spectacular transition between the sections of A&W; the playful addition of Venice Bitch albeit in its more sinister version; the autotune and muffled watery mixing on Fishtail; the experimentations on Peppers and A&W; the cosy loose warmth of Margaret and Let The Light In; the diaristic lyrics of several tracks; the creative interpolation of SYML and RIOPY’s tracks). It feels too heavy, too confounding and certainly very promising in terms of what we should expect from LDRX. It’s a challenging album, but if Antonoff’s recent comments on Rolling Stone (if I remember correctly) are anything to go by, Lana is entering an entirely new level of artistry where she’s going to push herself even further. At the Billboards awards she admitted that she’s feeling very creative and relaxed these days - remember how stale she felt her writing was during the COCC/BB days? - and Ocean Blvd feels like that necessary transformative stepping stone that will allow her to explore her art even deeper. It’s been extraordinary to watch and I cannot wait for the next chapter.

He co-produced Candy Necklace with Zach Dawes. He also produced Jon Batiste’s album (and won a Grammy for it). Apparently Dawes, Waterhouse and Batiste are very close friends and Lana was obviously very excited about working with all of them. I am pretty certain that they will contribute to the sound of LDRX (they might have already recorded several songs together given how last-minute and impromptu the addition of Candy Necklace was to the album). @Harry Nilsson Yes, Erickson is great at arranging strings etc. so if Lana wants to make a classical string-heavy album, then, yeah, he’ll be a fine pick. His work on the latest Father John Misty and Angel Olsen projects is impeccable.

Definitely Batiste, Dawes and Waterhouse along with Antonoff and Dean. Erickson is fine, and his production on Ocean Blvd is very strong - and miles better than his work on Blue Banisters -, but I don’t think that he has much more to offer unless Lana decides to make a FJM/Angel Olsen-esque record. I am obsessed with the instrumentals of the two interludes btw. Jack - and Jon on the second interlude - really snapped; very intricate and unsettling stuff.

Absolutely! LDR10’s soundscape being in the vein of A&W, Candy Necklace, first half of Taco Truck, and - yes - the instrumentals of the interludes would be a dream!

A&W is monumental and I hope that it’s just a taste of what’s to come in terms of Lana experimenting with structure and tempo changes/style shifts within a single song. She already experimented a bit on Black Bathing Suit, Text Book and Taco Truck (Fishtail, Candy Necklace and Peppers to a lesser extent, too) but what she managed to achieve with A&W is truly astonishing.

Yes, it performed relatively well. Still made more on its second day than COCC, BB and LFL on their first day (also surpassed NFR’s second day streams). Hopefully it won’t drop below 10 million on Sunday.

Has this been posted? LA Times reviewed the album today (it counts for MC). It’s a flat-out rave. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-03-26/lana-del-rey-did-you-know-theres-a-tunnel-under-ocean-blvd-album-review

I was scared that we might get another 3/5 review from them (BB did). It counts for MC (they still haven’t uploaded the Record Collector review btw, probably due to the fact that there hasn’t been a digital version of it yet?). https://amp.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/26/lana-del-rey-did-you-know-that-theres-a-tunnel-under-ocean-blvd-review-bold-and-enthralling

Something in the vein of Candy Necklace, with a lot of unexpected improvisations (see: the interlude) and lots of jazz. But the last few songs on the album could also indicate a potential experimentation with more electronic sounds. Given that we know that Lana and Jack were in the studio this winter, I’ll be surprised if he’s not included on the next album too.

I think that Jon Batiste is here to stay. She obviously admires him tremendously, and I highly doubt their sessions only produced one song. She even made a music video for Candy Necklace and included an interlude with him on the tracklist. I wouldn’t mind an entire album produced by him, tbh. He’s tremendously talented.

AOTY added Spill Magazine’s 90/100 review. Sadly it doesn’t count for MC. https://spillmagazine.com/spill-album-review-lana-del-rey-did-you-know-that-theres-a-tunnel-under-ocean-blvd/ Other very positive reviews (that unfortunately don’t count for AOTY and MC, but they are worth a look): https://apnews.com/article/lana-del-rey-ocean-blvd-album-review-4952df4b07f5177ee4b4e3bc13e381d8 https://www.altpress.com/lana-del-rey-did-you-know-theres-a-tunnel-under-ocean-blvd-review/ https://whynow.co.uk/read/did-you-know-that-there-are-tunnels-under-ocean-blvd-lana-del-rey-review https://www.ft.com/content/512b909f-a032-4ce9-be6c-6b2a00e25bb7