Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club: More Melancholy and Melodic Melodramas

Fans of the Baroque pop songstress Lana Del Rey anxiously awaited her 7th studio record after her critically acclaimed Grammy-nominated album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019). What they got was somewhat less exciting. Del Rey slows and strips down her voice and instrumentals in her new album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, full of sleepy bedroom pop and heavy quarantine vibes. Many of her usual themes are present: Americana, fame, icons, religion, and melodramas. Some of her poetic, quiet, and jazzy musings feel relatable and current. The album takes a close look at the darkness in the everyday, and the need for escapism that is, at times, tangible for a modern audience that is longing for wanderlust, perhaps just as much as the moody pop princess herself.

Del Rey tends to bounce between making more upbeat experimental records (Born to Die, Ultraviolence, NFR!) and creating albums that feel like a continual lullaby, like her Honeymoon album (2015). From the first song, it’s clear Chemtrails will be the latter. The album’s opening track, “White Dress” may make the listener excited about what’s to come, yet it’s one of the few songs that offer any delightful surprises. The track is the bare minimum in the best way. The artist’s slow and hushed vocals dreamily pair with quiet piano, leading to an impressive chorus in which Del Rey’s register rises and quickens into a slippery melody, mimicking a 50s lounge singer. Del Rey looks back on how far she’s come, while also reflecting on “a simpler time” in her past when she worked as a waitress. “Look how I do this / Look how I got this”, Del Rey boasts, while also wondering if she was better off without fame. After a decade of controversy for Del Rey, the album reflects her nostalgia for easier times and a desire for an escape from our modern call-out culture - something many listeners may be able to identify with.

The title track perfectly reflects a concern explored throughout the album which is evident in every track: mundane picket fence Americana in contrast, or perhaps in perfect unison, with the darker sides of the nation. Del Rey plays the part of a bored housewife, grocery shopping, “washing my hair, doing the laundry”, to evoke a need for escape and travel, something, as it turns out, not only somber housewives are feeling in this moment. The song’s melody and instrumentals in themselves feel empty, accurately mirroring the tired lyrics, which is increasingly evident by an outro of quiet cymbals. The track “Dark But Just a Game” is a bit sexier, with whispered bubble gum lyrics (“Life is sweet what-whatever, baby”) like those on the artist’s first album. The track offers a bit more energy instrumentally, particularly when we hit the chorus. Lyrics like “The best ones lost their mind” and “While the whole world is crazy, we’re getting high in the parking lot” could be referring to fame being dark but just a game, or perhaps to modern life itself.

Del Rey also admits to a few perks of her fame. The second to last track, “Dance Till We Die”, opens with the lyrics ``I'm coverin' Joni and dancin' with Joan, Stevie's callin' on the telephone”, referring to the friendships she’s made with the female icons she draws inspiration from. The song is as melodic and dreamy as the rest of the album but breaks out towards the end with a folk-rock verse in which Del Rey suggests leaving LA in the middle of the night to drive to Louisiana. The sound is unlike anything you’ve heard before which only makes you want more of it. Sadly, we don’t get any. The album ends with “For Free'', a collaboration with singers Zella Day and Weyes Blood. Although beautifully harmonized, it’s a quiet and uninspiring way to leave the album.

While this melancholy record does inhabit the feelings of the “new normal” which may comfort some listeners, some may be looking for a pick-me-up instead, such as pop star Dua Lipa’s latest dance album Future Nostalgia. While perhaps Del Rey is aiming to connect to those feeling a desire for escapism, she may fail to due to the less relatable focus on fame and the confusing combination of it spun with depictions of life in ordinary suburbia. With Del Rey, you tend to know what you’re going to get, but perhaps that’s what keeps her cult followers coming back for more. Lana Del Rey is good at being Lana Del Rey: an icon exhaustingly obsessed with trying to figure out what being an icon even means, and if she even wants to be one.