Lana Del Rey’s ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’ review

A lot is made of Rihanna‘s seven albums in seven years, released between 2005 and 2012. But Lana Del Rey is about to release her ninth in 11 years. Or 10th, if you count 2012’s Paradise EP. (Which you should, as it’s substantial.)

More remarkable than the size of her discography, however, is its quality: by our arbitrary calculation, it’s roughly 97.8% exquisite. Besides, we’re forever partial to the overblown big pop moments of ‘Born To Die’.

“I was like: ‘This sounds really, really different now. Ballads sound like pop bangers’,” Lana recently told Rolling Stone UK of last-minute production changes to her debut; still charting over a decade later in the US and UK. You can feel the vindication, then, on Did You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, on which she revels in piano-driven slowies, one after the other, as if perfecting a formula through trial and error.

She succeeds on her first try. Album opener ‘The Grants’ is a swooning, epic lullaby that unfurls on a charmingly messy note, with 20 Feet From Stardom‘s Melodye Perry, Pattie Howard, and Shikena Jones singing in soaring harmony, but botching a lyric. “I’m gonna take mine of you with me,” they swoon (as opposed to ‘mind’), referring to memories of a significant other Lana’s taking to the afterlife.

A hush falls over the trio as unhurried piano keys begins – a strangely abrupt change for such soothing sounds. The melody teeters on the edge of darkness. ‘Will this LP be more Lust For Life or Ultraviolence?’ super-fans might ask at this juncture. The answer, as Lana breathily finds her way to a near-booming vocal, amid ecstatic adulation for family (“my sister’s first-born child, I’m gonna take that too with me; my grandmother’s last smile, I’m gonna take that too with me”) is neither. This album breaks new ground. She’s never tackled subject matter this personal before – or with such confidence. At 37, she sounds more self-possessed than ever.

One wonders if this is in part due to a reconnection with spirituality. It’s clearly signposted on an arresting interlude of pastor Judah Smith delivering a sermon. You get a sense of it on ‘Let the Light In’, a loved-up duet with Father John Misty, that makes a day spent driving around shooting the shit sound celestial. She addresses god directly, as well as family once more on the reverential ‘Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing.’

Lana signatures are scattered throughout like easter eggs: ethereal strings on ‘Kintsugi’; an examination of romantic love on the celebratory ‘Margaret’. (Albeit an objective one; it’s about Ocean Blvd co-producer Jack Antonoff and his fiancé, with the Bleachers star serving a deliciously gravelly vocal.) Diaristic lyrics on ‘Fingertips‘ are startling and revelatory, as usual: “What kind of mother was she to say I’d end up in institutions? All I wanted to do was kiss Aaron Green,” she shares of her adolescence, before asking her sister: “Caroline, will you be with me? Will the baby be alright? Will I have one of mine? Can I handle it; even if I do?” and “give me a mausoleum, in Rhode Island with Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and Dave” – the latter seemingly referencing a late uncle who died in a 2016 climbing accident on the Rocky Mountains.

This forthright profundity and soul-searching might sound heavy, but on the whole, it’s uplifting and positive. And this, despite occasional flashbacks of lyrical nihilism, as on the first single and title track. (“Fuck me to death, love me until I love myself.”) Regardless, it’s all applied with such lightness of touch as to never impact the central thrust of the record: divinely cinematic, orchestral, symphonic, even churchy music. At times, it’s like stumbling on a playlist of the best classical arrangements of centuries past, save for Lana’s charismatic voice, which purrs and trills in and out of time with the piano on ‘Candy Necklace’, as if enraptured.

The beauty across the record’s 77 minutes does overpower. If this reviewer has one gentle criticism of Ocean Blvd, it’s that the leisurely, sentimental moments outweigh the surprising stuff by 2:1. But this is so obviously by design (like those song titles!) that it’s arguably irrelevant. Standout track ‘A&W’ suggests so: it mimics this equation almost to scale across a grandiose seven minutes and 15 seconds, four of which are all folksy strings, as Lana casually declares herself an ‘American whore’ – “it’s not about having someone to love me anymore,” she converses drowsily, like ‘Gods and Monsters’ Lana the morning after a night of debauchery – before the song thrillingly transmogrifies into a trap-hop kiss-off with an air of the spooky. “Your mom called, I told her, you’re fucking up big time,” she spits. (Endlessly quotable). A brief, blood-curdling scream pierces the crescendo.

Album closer ‘Taco Truck x VB’ is similarly nervy, incorporating a gnarlier version of Norman Fucking Rockwell! single ‘Venice Bitch’, with all the self-referential confidence of Madonna sampling ‘Vogue’ on ‘Deeper and Deeper’. Comparing these two songs, and these two artists, may be like comparing night and day. But one clumsily does so to lead to the following point: in triumphantly defying her critics, alchemising her pain, and owning her sexuality, Lana, like Madonna, has become an icon to generations of queer kids. To quote them, she is mother.

4/5

Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is out on 24 March.