Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails over the Country Club [Review]

It's getting really hard to determine how many albums that American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey has now released. Wikipedia counts 2021's Chemtrails over the Country Club as her seventh studio album, but one could also argue that it's her ninth studio album if they were to count Lana Del Ray, Paradise, and Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass (the third of which is a spoken word album that also functioned as the audiobook to her poetry collection of the same title). Lana has released so much material over the last decade or so that it can be difficult for even the most loyal and committed fans to keep track of it all, but how many albums this release makes notwithstanding, Chemtrails (originally announced as White Hot Forever) was released on March 19, 2021. Featuring eleven tracks, it is probably the singer's folkiest album to date, shedding her pop sensibilities almost completely. It is very reminiscent, to me, of the back half of her 2017 album Lust for Life, reminding me a great deal of songs like "Beautiful People Beautiful Problems" and "Heroin." It opens with one of my favorite songs from the album, "White Dress." "White Dress" starts off with gentle piano (somewhat reminiscent of Norman Fucking Rockwell!'s title track), soon bringing in Lana's vocals which are definitely unique here, as Lana employs a vocal style that I don't recall her ever really using before - a breathy, airy, and somewhat whispery style that she maintains throughout most of the song. The song also employs some interesting and unusual strategies such as certain lines of the chorus making use of too many syllables to fit its bar, and I love this song not only because of such unique methods but also because of its narrative lyrics, sort of telling us the story of a good portion of Lana's past. "When I was a waitress wearing a white dress," the chorus shares, "look how I do this. Look how I got this... Down at the Men in Music Business Conference down in Orlando; I was only nineteen." It functions as a great way to kick off the album, not only sonically but also in that it feels like the introduction to a story.

We then get the title track and second single from the album, "Chemtrails over the Country Club." I actually already reviewed this song as a single, but I do want to quickly say that since the single was released, the song has grown on me a lot, and it's now one of my favorite songs on the album. "Tulsa Jesus Freak," on the other hand, is unfortunately one of my least favorites. It is overall just sonically uninteresting and flat to me, with the melody sticking to a very limited range over a light, redundant beat. This song is, however, probably the closest that the album gets to Lana's more upbeat, poppier sound heard on albums like Born to Die and NFR!. It is, as Genius helpfully points out, very likely about her ex Sean Larkin, as he is from Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is also worth mentioning that when Lana first announced this album, revealing the title to be (as previously mentioned) White Hot Forever, it was also revealed that the album would feature a title track, and since "Tulsa Jesus Freak" uses the phrase "white hot forever" multiple times, that was probably the original title of this song. "Let Me Love You Like a Woman" is the fourth track on Chemtrails and was released last year as the album's lead single, and while it is a beautiful song melodically, I still (as I mentioned in my review of the single) am not a big fan of the nature of the lyrics because of one way that I think that some people could interpret them, but I digress. Chemtrails over the Country Club then offers up "Wild at Heart," a subtle but beautiful song dominated by Lana's porcelain and somewhat echoed vocals over light accompaniment of acoustic guitar and piano. Although this song is not my favorite on Chemtrails, it's definitely a beautiful song, and I love how, in keeping with tracks on NFR! and Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, she refers to the California fires of recent years: "I left Calabasas, escaped all the ashes..." There are also, like "White Dress," parts of the song in which Lana is squeezing in more syllables into bars than she should, but it's definitely being done with purpose, and it's being done tastefully.

"Dark but Just a Game" is one of my favorite songs on Chemtrails. On several occasions in the past - such as on Honeymoon's "God Knows I Tried" and Lust for Life's "13 Beaches" - Del Rey has lyrically referred to the negative impacts that fame has had on her, and that theme is similarly explored on "Dark but Just a Game." According to Genius, the phrase is in reference to something that producer Jack Antonoff said to Lana about fame changing people for the worse. I love the beautifully catchy melody of this tune over gently strumming acoustic guitar and a very light and gentle beat. I especially love the melody of the chorus in which Del Rey declares that, even though famous people before her have succumbed to the pressure of fame and changed, she will not: "We keep changing all the time. The best ones lost their minds, so I'm not gonna change." "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" is another highlight for me. It's another subtle one, with very gentle and quiet acoustic accompaniment, and I love the melody. It's lyrically a pretty straightforward song, calling attention to the idea that nomadic people who frequently travel (as she does especially while touring) might have a different idea of what home means than other people do. Frequent travel and exploration is, for some people, normal and comforting. We then get "Yosemite" on Chemtrails, and this was the song for which I was most excited when I saw the tracklisting of the album revealed because it's an outtake from Lust for Life that Del Rey first mentioned several years ago. It interestingly didn't make the Lust for Life cut because, as Lana stated, she thought of it as a sister song to "The Next Best American Record" which also didn't make the cut, and I say that that is interesting because both songs did end up being released but on different albums (although "The Next Best American Record" underwent pretty significant lyrical changes that kind of changed its meaning). You can tell that "Yosemite" is an outtake from Lust for Life because it sonically sounds exactly like the overall tone of that album. Although not necessarily one of my favorites, it's a beautiful acoustic song about maintaining love for another person despite the fact that you both change over time.

My top three favorite songs on this album, in no particular order, are "Dark but Just a Game," "Not All Who Wander Are Lost," and "Breaking Up Slowly," and it's really hard for me to choose my top favorite out of those three. "Breaking Up Slowly" is definitely channeling Stevie Nicks, and guest vocalist Nikki Lane even sounds a bit like Stevie. I really love both its melody and its lyrics, and in keeping with a lot of folk music, the lyrics are simple but meaningful, speaking of the complicated situation of loving someone even though you're unhappy in the relationship: "...breakin' up slowly is a hard thing to do," Del Rey and Lane assert in the catchy chorus. "I love you only, but it's makin' me blue... It's hard to be lonely, but it's the right thing to do." (Chemtrails came out a little after a bad breakup that I went through myself last month, and hearing this song was a little bit comforting to hear which could very well account for some of my attachment to it.) Although it's hard for me to explain why, "Dance Till We Die" (likely a reference to "Lust for Life" in which she sings that we "gotta dance 'til we die") is one of my least favorite songs on the album; I just don't feel much attachment to it. Like many of the songs on the album, it's a folksy song featuring piano and guitar, although it also, as is typical of Lana Del Rey, features remnants of jazz, and it also picks up in intensity more than halfway through, with Lana using rougher and more aggressive vocals than she typically does, channeling classic rock artists such as Janis Joplin. She also mentions covering Joni Mitchell in the lyrics, so it probably isn't a coincidence that the following (and final) track is "For Free," a cover of a Joni Mitchell song. Joining Lana on this cover are Weyes Blood and Zella Day, and it's very faithful to the piano driven original. It makes for a fairly effective closing to the album, and Genius does a great job offering insight into how it ties up some of the overall themes on the album. I overall like Chemtrails over the Country Club but, compared to the masterpiece that is NFR!, find it disappointing. It, in comparison, is much tamer and much less ambitious in my personal opinion.