Lana Del Rey
Blue Banisters

Second album by Lana recorded in 2021.
However, her communicative urgency has not affected her perpetual state of grace. The evolution of her music, parallel to that of her persona, proceeds smoothly, as if from her first song to this latest work, we are reading a novel. Talking about a novel is not accidental because if we juxtapose the lyrics of her songs, we notice a dense network of references and citations, intertwined with a coherent evolution of the Lana character, which permeates all the lyrics.
The transition from the dark and provocative times of car races with cocaine-addicted sugar daddies has slowly faded into the searing solitudes of Sunset Boulevard, before taking the road of Laurel Canyon and the open countryside, where it now seems Lana has retreated. The feeling one gets listening to this album is that of a circle closing. Never before has her personality emerged above the mask, laying bare and taking stock of her present and past. Also musically, since the arrangements of the tracks are often essential, supported only by piano notes.
Among these, we recall the most heartfelt and personal tracks of the album, from "Violets for Roses", "Beautiful", to "Cherry Blossom" and "Sweet Carolina" in closing, a sort of dialogue with the child Del Rey. Not to be forgotten is the surprising "Wildflower Wildfire", with its skewed and asymmetrical piano offering unprecedented glimpses into the singer's past and family history, or the single "Arcadia", rarefied and dreamy.
In other tracks, we return to sounds more typical of the early albums, especially in terms of broken and slowed beats, like the opening "Text Book", where Lana has no qualms about mentioning the Electra complex that supports much of her early work, or "Black Bathing Suit". Elsewhere, the seventies sounds of the last albums make an appearance again, like in the shouted and edgy "Dealer", which was initially supposed to appear in "Chemtrails Over the Country Club", or in the splendid and polished melody of "Thunder".
This mixing of old and new sounds is also due to the recovery of songs left to mature over the years, duly reworked and updated. The final result remains a coherent flow in its diversity, in line with the album's objective, which is to draw a line and summarize about 10 years of musical and personal adventures.
It's difficult to hypothesize how these adventures might continue, given the sense of completeness left in our mouths at the end of the listen and Lana's increasingly strong desire to isolate herself, finding peace and serenity in a rural and intimate existence that increasingly transpires from the images of her videos, like the one that accompanies the title track. A life made of small things and friendships, where music emerges as an almost therapeutic attempt to compensate for emotional lacks and bring dreams to life.
But if one day these dreams became reality, would it still make sense to compose music?