ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Elsewhere on this page you’ll find that Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard has covered Teenage Fanclub’s entire Bandwagonesque album. Lana Del Rey has not, as you might briefly think, delivered her version of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life album (I know, shame). Instead she has merely borrowed from Pop the title and the decision to surprise longtime fans by sporting a great big smile on the cover. This is a more positive, more aware Lana Del Rey – less obsessed with her own heartaches and ready to address the wider problems of women on God Bless America. Musically, the dark, cinematic vibe is still there, but with a slight update to the beats beneath (plenty of dry trap snare drums). It’s a long album, with the hint of a two-part structure: hip-hop and R&B up front (collaborations with the Weeknd and A$AP Rocky), followed by a classic rock second half. The latter includes duets with Stevie Nicks (Beautiful People Beautiful Problems) and Sean Lennon (Tomorrow Never Came), and the final track, Get Free, which sounds like Radiohead’s Creep arranged by Brian Wilson, and ends with an overt reference to the Neil Young song that contained the famous line “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”. Del Rey is showing no signs of doing either. ME