The lyrics are largely indecipherable, but it still drips with sadness it sounds the way watching Anna Nicole Smith circle the drain felt. The Best Song Wasn’t The Single: “Yayo,” in all its woozy burlesque glory, has been transformed into the most interesting song Lana has ever done. The irony, of course, is that now that she has delivered on the hype…people might actually stop talking about her. By ditching the sonic fads (you won’t be missed, sad white girl rapping), shoring up her vocals, and skipping over her more bombastic unreleased songs (“Serial Killer,” “Paradise”), Lana has made a cohesive, moving record. The new material surely isn’t perfect - “Burning Desire” ventures dangerously close to her “drunken Real Housewife” vocal tic, and she still pummels the listener with damaged Americana reference points - but Paradise is a major step forward for Lana Del Rey. Even when Lana goes big here, like on the Rick Rubin-produced opener “Ride,” it has all the grandeur that she aimed for on “National Anthem” without the grating affectations and manufactured swagger. The melancholy waltz of “Bel Air,” for instance, has a forest nymph chant for a chorus, and it’s quite possible that the EP’s most fun song is the weepy “Blue Velvet,” due to its unabashed commitment to stillness. Here, the empty spaces are as important as the cascading strings and the most restrained moments are vastly more powerful than the most blown-out moments from Born To Die. Canned strings, rising fuzz squalls and that ubiquitous “ShYAH” sample were slathered on so thick that Born To Die‘s fifteen tracks all blurred into one syrupy groan. With Lana’s voice taking the spotlight and carrying such emotional heft, the production was dialed back. When she does go into submissive mode, crooning “Let me put on a show for you, daddy” on “Yayo,” it’s too damn haunting to be erotic. On “Burning Desire,” “Ride” and elsewhere, Lana is no longer willing to let you play your video games, she’s the active agent. Thankfully, the sexualization on Paradise comes without Born‘s troublesome infantilization. On paper, parts of “Gods And Monsters” could be a trashy outtake from Rihanna‘s “S&M”: “I was an angel / Looking to get fucked hard…Fuck yeah, give it to me / This is heaven, what I truly want.” But the lines are delivered with such sultry numbness that it could be some grand statement on sex and detachment, whether or not that was Lana’s intention. Lana quotes Walt Whitman on “Body Electric” minutes after uttering “ My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola/ My eyes are wide like cherry pie” on “Cola,” which is definitely absurd and probably brilliant.
10 Photos »In other welcome news, the lyrics this time (save for “American”) are not nearly as ripe for face-palming - partly because many of them are batshit insane.
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