Chemtrails Over The Country Club — more intimate, less grandiloquent, still brilliant / review
Lana Del Rey’s seventh album is one more decisive step towards the pantheon of the great singer-songwriters.
A decade into a singular career, Lana Del Rey is uniquely positioned as one of the most influential artists of her generation. In her seventh studio album, she pauses and looks back at the dust settling in the distance. Work on Chemtrails Over The Country Club — initially dubbed White Hot Forever — started before Norman Fucking Rockwell!, its phenomenal predecessor, had even left Polydor’s vaults. It’s Jack Antonoff and Lana’s second collaboration; more intimate, less grandiloquent, still brilliant.
Chemtrails Over The Country Club isn’t quite the statement of purpose NFR! was back in 2019. The new album doesn’t lunge forward as much as it glances back at years on the outskirts of the pop mainstream––as well as times before all that jazz. In ‘White Dress’, Lana longingly recalls “when I was a waitress wearing a tight dress handling the heat / I wasn’t famous, just listening to Kings of Leon to the beat”. Fame has clearly taken its toll; she whispers “maybe I was better off” as the track trails off, itching for the soft cloak of anonymity. Lana repeatedly writes off celebrity as an unfortunate consequence of being able to write and perform music for a living; complaining “don’t even want what’s mine / much less the fame” on ‘Dark But Just A Game’ and feeling “burdened by the weight of fame” on ‘Dance Till We Die’. It’s one of the several Lana-esque contradictions on Chemtrails Over The Country Club: having frequently deplored her standing as an underdog, it’s unclear whether the Americana songstress is seeking recognition or recoiling from it.
The most flagrant exercise in staying in place instead of moving forward is the inclusion of ‘Yosemite’, an outtake from Lust for Life and the only track that was not produced by Jack. The song itself explores the notion of permanence in unstable times, fondly recalling old flames and naively affirming “seasons may change / but we won’t change”. A line in particular resounds: “No more candle in the wind”, an artifact of a beloved image in Lana’s own handbook — the use of which culminated with the resonating “you took my sadness out of context / At the Mariners Apartment Complex / I ain’t no candle in the wind” in NFR!. The exact same line also finds a home in ‘Tulsa Jesus Freak’: in the face of volatility, it apparently bears repeating.
Although customary motifs and habitual juxtapositions make their way onto Chemtrails Over The Country Club, tone has significantly shifted since the Born to Die days. Lana sounds more meditative, less reckless, more self-aware; eerie details are confidently woven into the songs’ fabric without a need to signal their presence with more ominous arrangements. Such is the way chemtrails are introduced on the title track: a spectral shadow whose story is left largely unwritten. The mythos exists and that’s all that matters.
Whereas NFR!’s world felt self-contained, Chemtrails Over The Country Club’s universe is ever-expanding; testing new waters, albeit sparingly, and throwing production and performance enhancements against the walls to see what sticks. Jack lets us peek into an alternate universe where Lana beguiles her audience with heaps of Auto-Tune on ‘Tulsa Jesus Freak’ — a most surprising and successful endeavor. He brings on a synthesized marching beat to the verses of Radiohead-reminiscent ‘Dark but Just A Game’, an addition that is to be expected on his work with Lorde; less so in Lana’s oeuvre. ‘White Dress’ is also new land conquered: Lana’s vocals are pushed into a high-pitched whispered rasp in a realm where no D-esser is allowed and vaping sounds abound.
“Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have / But I have it” closed NFR!’s tumultuous journey. And Chemtrails Over The Country Club picks up right there and then. Breaking with tradition, the album offers specks of a communal experience; by embracing a folksier sound, Lana and Jack invite the listener to chime in. Until now, Lana seemed reticent about sharing a stage with her audience, safely keeping them at a distance if she could help it. The folk ballad ‘Not All Who Wander Are Lost’ cultivates a rootsy warm sound where vocals pile on, snuggle and reach out to the listener to join the chorus. It’s a sentiment shared by ‘Wild At Heart’’s outro, an ultimate occasion to rejoice and kumbaya before the introspective intermittence of ‘Dark But Just A Game’. Lana even has a stab at overt optimism: at one point she marvels “We won’t stop dancin’ til we die / We’ll keep walking on the sunny side” lethargically but convincingly.
Chemtrails Over The Country Club is one more decisive step towards the pantheon of the great singer-songwriters. In fact the album unfolds like one momentous show and tell. Having little left to prove of her songwriting prowess, Lana shows reverence to the women who led her to every American neck of the woods — from the (oddly-but-spendidly–specific) Men in Music Business Conference down in Orlando to Woodside, California by way of Arkansas, Texas, Nebraska, Calabasas and Yosemite. Stevie Nicks, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell… all songwriting giants whose ranks Lana seems destined to join after only a decade in the game proper.
She reunites with Zella Day and Weyes Blood for a final homage with a Joni Mitchell cover they performed together on the NFR! tour. The 1970 cut meditates on the correlation between fame and talent, suggesting the latter is largely ignored until the former is acquired. One last time, it seems like Lana wants us to get her closer to the limelight she deserves but abhors all at the same time. The dilemma is part of the alluring mystery: the American singer-songwriter stays elusive. It might be why we keep coming back for more.
Listen to the album here (Spotify)
Thanks for reading, happy listening!
