The first three tracks on the album are all tracks that I discussed already - "Text Book" (reviewed here), the title track (reviewed in that same post), and "Arcadia" (reviewed here). "Text Book," as I discussed in my review of it, has a beautiful chorus; however, I don't think that it works as an opening track, especially compared to past openers such as "Ride," "Cruel World," "Norman fucking Rockwell," and even "White Dress." "Arcadia" is by far my favorite of the first three tracks, but it is followed by a very strange track that does not sonically belong on the album at all. A short instrumental interlude, the fourth track is titled "Interlude - The Trio," and, in a review of the album, Stuff writer Alex Behan makes this argument regarding the track a lot more eloquently than I ever could even though I feel the exact same way: "Frustratingly, the booming trap beat that makes Interlude - The Trio such an exciting departure turns out to be a false flag. For just a minute, there's the hope Del Rey might be about to burst through her self-created glass ceiling of style, but it turns out to be a mere palette cleanser." While I don't entirely agree with their stance of her style being monotonous (I do think that she has taken risks on tracks such as "High by the Beach," "Summer Bummer," "Groupie Love," and "Cinnamon Girl"), I do definitely think that the past two albums have felt rather monotonous, and "Interlude - The Trio" offers hope that we might be getting some different flavors than the first three tracks offer, but, as Behan puts it, it's a false flag. "Black Bathing Suit" opens and closes with a beautiful keyboard melody that sounds like a lullaby, by far my favorite aspect of the song. It is overall, like most of Del Rey's material of the recent past, a slow-paced piano piece, although it also features gentle guitar and a soft drum beat. It does, however, take a somewhat interesting turn when the chorus slightly changes the pace and the key, almost even making the track sound like a mashup of two different songs. Like "Arcadia," the chorus of this track reminds me a bit of Born to Die's "Video Games," and although this track isn't necessarily a highlight for me on Blue Banisters, I do appreciate its lyrical content, which addresses both the COVID-19 pandemic and the public scrutiny under which Lana has recently fallen for her weight gain.
One of my favorite tracks on Blue Banisters is undoubtedly "If You Lie Down with Me." It is, however, one of many tracks originally intended for an earlier album, having been written during the Ultraviolence sessions. It is another piano ballad, but not only do I love the lulling melody, I adore the outro - a playful and jaunty melody played by a traditional band featuring trumpet and tuba that sounds straight out of a 1930s or 1940s tune. We then get "Beautiful" which is played on the higher end of the piano, keys trilling and fluttering underneath Lana's vocals. I really appreciate the lyrical message of this one, which, to me, is about how negative emotions such as sadness can be transformed into something beautiful such as art. Lana has repeatedly throughout her career referenced the color blue in her lyrics and song titles, such as in "Baby Blue Love," "Blue Jeans," her cover of "Blue Velvet," "Get Free" ("out of the black, into the blue"), "Norman fucking Rockwell" ("...your head in your hands as you color me blue"), this album's title track, etc. She now has an entire album with Blue in its title, and on "Beautiful," she once again references the color, here in both a literal and a metaphorical sense - literally referring to Picasso having frequently painted pictures with mostly blue hues and also referring to blue as a feeling of sadness. "Violets for Roses," another downtempo piano ballad, seems to be about Lana reflecting on a toxic relationship, thankful that she is now free from it. The song, for a couple of reasons, reminds me a great deal of her Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass poem "My Bedroom Is a Sacred Place - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed," so much so in fact that I feel confident that both pieces were written about the same person. The first parallel is that both reference violets and roses; in this song, Lana sings in the chorus that "you made me trade my violets for roses," and in "My Bedroom Is a Sacred Place...," she writes in the fourth paragraph that "I love rose gardens. I plant violets every time someone leaves me." Secondly, in this song, she sings in the pre-chorus that "ever since I fell out of love with you, I fell back in love with me" which reminds me of a line from the aforementioned poem: "...The more I step into becoming a poet, the less I will fall into being with you."
My #1 favorite song on the album is probably "Dealer," featuring uncredited vocals from Miles Kane. (He takes up so much of the song that I am really not sure why he isn't credited, but I digress.) This song was originally intended to be on a scrapped collaboration album between Lana and The Shadow Puppets (of which Kane is the frontman), as was Norman Fucking Rockwell!'s "California." It was then supposed to be on Chemtrails but didn't make that cut either, and I'm glad that it did get recycled on Blue Banisters (even though a pretty high percentage of Blue Banisters' tracks are, as I said, recycled) because I love it so much, especially since if there is one song on Blue Banisters (aside, of course, from the early instrumental interlude) on which Lana does escape the album's mold and take a bit of a risk, it's "Dealer" (especially because of Lana's vocals which are louder and much more intense than they usually are). "Dealer" is a soft rock song with low bass guitar and keyboards, both of which are heavily washed out by Lana's and Miles Kane's vocals and the steady percussion. It seems to lyrically address depression ("I can't sleep through the tears") and feeling lost in it, like there is no possible way to cure or even relieve it. The speaker tells the addressee not to try to check in on their well-being by contacting people such as their drug dealer, their father, or their doctor because such people cannot possibly know their state of mind better than they themselves do. I also think that there is more than one way to interpret the word dealer. It could be a drug dealer dealing illicit drugs or it could be someone like a psychiatrist or even pharmacist supplying legal drugs like antidepressants. In Lana's entrance to the track (as it begins solely with Miles), she seems to be addressing a lover with whom she has had a toxic, one-sided relationship, so the dealer could even be someone "dealing" intimacy. We then get "Thunder," which is another song originally intended for the aforementioned album with The Shadow Puppets. A demo version of the song actually leaked a few years ago, and even though "Thunder" is still one of my favorite songs on Blue Banisters, I very much prefer the demo version, as it has a lot more energy and is a lot more anthemic. It's a bit stripped down here, possibly to fit the album's overall downbeat energy.
I discussed "Wildflower Wildfire" already here, and the next three tracks are all tracks confirmed to be from the Ultraviolence sessions. "Nectar of the Gods" is another one that leaked a few years ago, previously under the titles "Wild on You" and "Color Blue" (another reference to blue!). It was written, along with "If You Lie Down with Me," nearly a decade ago during the Ultraviolence sessions, and one of the reasons why I am kind of frustrated with its inclusion here is because it, along with the next two tracks, was not re-recorded and has undergone absolutely no changes (other than likely having been remastered) from its leaked demo version. Like I said, these inclusions make Blue Banisters feel more like a compilation album with a few new songs than a new album, and while, like I said, I completely understand Lana's anger and frustration around these songs having been leaked (which she addressed in a live video to fans), the reality of it is that they did leak and she knew that they leaked, so why not finally release that unreleased collection like she teased so long ago instead of releasing a bunch of previously leaked material under the pretense of it being a new album? It's just really frustrating to me as a fan because, like I said, it doesn't really feel like an album. Anyway, I digress. "Nectar of the Gods" is played primarily on acoustic guitar, and I really like the haunting chanting at the very beginning. I also love its references to Ultraviolence's opening track "Cruel World": "What cruel world is this?" and "I get wild and fuckin' crazy." I have always loved "Living Legend," ever since I heard it when it leaked. It is a piano ballad with a lulling, beautiful melody and lyrics in which Lana holds a hero in high esteem. (She has stated that it was written about her first mentor Jane Powers, hence the line about a "sweet baby Jane.") As previously stated, this is another song that was written and recorded for Ultraviolence (once again not being re-recorded or remixed for Blue Banisters) and consequently, like "Nectar of the Gods," bears another lyrical parallel to an Ultraviolence track, this time to the upbeat "Florida Kilos" when she sings in the bridge that "I got guns in the summertime."
"Cherry Blossom" is yet another song from the Ultraviolence sessions that didn't undergo any changes. Several years before it leaked, Lana previewed it by singing it live on Instagram, referring to it as "a lullaby I wrote years ago." Another piano ballad, it is a beautiful song from the perspective of a mother comforting her daughter, and it once again draws parallels to "Cruel World" when, in the bridge, she sings that "it's a cruel, cruel world, but we don't care." Blue Banisters then closes with... you guessed it, a piano ballad! According to Genius, "Sweet Carolina" is a love letter to her sister Chuck Grant. It is clear that the two are very close; Chuck is a photographer who has shot most of the album covers so far, and she also appears in a lot of the photos featured with the art of the physical copy of this album. She appears in some of Lana's music videos such as "Summertime (The Gershwin Version)" and "Blue Banisters," and "Blue Banisters" even name drops her in its lyrics: "Chucky's makin' birthday cake." Given that Chuck did recently have a child, that could be why there seems to be a recurrent theme of motherhood on the album (and could have impacted Del Rey's decision to include "Cherry Blossom"), such as in "Blue Banisters" when Lana declares that "there's a baby on the way." It's a nice enough song but isn't in my opinion musically dramatic enough to work as the closing. Although not on Blue Banisters since it was just recently released in early 2022, Lana did also release a new song titled "Watercolor Eyes" for the HBO TV series Euphoria. The song is believed to have been written specifically for Euphoria, although it does reference an as-of-yet to be released (or heard, since it hasn't leaked) track titled "Rock Candy Sweet" (which was also originally meant to be the Blue Banisters album title): "I think that you taste like rock candy, sweet like beaches..." It's a really beautiful song that reminds me so much of Ultraviolence with its softly strumming electric guitar resembling that album's slow surf rock sound as found on tracks like "Cruel World" and "Pretty When You Cry." Overall, Blue Banisters is a decent album but definitely not her strongest, and I just, as I said, wish that if she is going to release songs that fans have already heard, either advertise the album as a compilation of old recordings or re-record the songs like she did with "Thunder," but at the end of the day, it's her music, and the art is her vision.
