Lana Del Rey releases ninth album and delivers her most personal and risky performance [REVIEW]

From the trip hop of video gamesto the Visionary Award at the Billboard Women in Music Awards 2023a long way has been traversed by Lana Del Rey. Today, at the age of 37 and more than a decade after the release of her melancholic first single, the singer establishes her lyrical, sound and personal maturity.

In Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?released this Friday, 24, Del Rey returns with a ninth studio album for which he once again entrusted the Jack Antonoffinseparable partner since the praised Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019).

“Lana is borderless. She has reached a point in her work where there is nowhere to go. […] It’s a place where she breaks free, where she’s a leader,” said the musician and producer.

In fact, Del Rey exceeds itself in this work m that dedicates the praises of a pastor to an entire track. “Judah Smith Interlude“; which makes a pronunciation error in the coral, in “The Grants”, the disc opening moment; that transforms the chorus of a 1950s song into the already beloved verse “Jimmy, Jimmy, cocoa puff, Jimmy, Jimmy, ride”in A W; who borrows samples from angelina, from canadian rapper tommy genesisto deliver the fun and almost danceable Peppers; and who remixes one of his own singles, Venice Bitchand uses it as a surprise card in “Taco Truck x VB”the last track.

Despite that, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?is a family album (whose apex is in “The Grant’s, an allusion to her surname) and, above all, to herself. Throughout the 16 songs, Del Rey reveals torments, as it always did; this time, however, focused on the aspirations of motherhood, marriage, life and death.

‘Do you want children? / Do you wanna marry me?’ (Do you want kids? / Do you want to marry me?), he asks in ‘Sweet’. In “Fingertips,” perhaps the most intimate, the questions remain.

“Will I Die […] And if I do, will you be there with me, Father, Sister, Brother? […] Will the baby be alright? Will I have one of mine? / Can I handle it even if I do?” […] And if I die, you will be with me, father, sister, brother […] Will the baby be okay? Will I have mine one day? And will I handle it even if I do?”).

The elements that make Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? one of the most intriguing works by Del Rey they are, at the same time, however, the very ones who stumble him. The intimacy, sometimes, can sound monotonous, and the inventiveness of the interludes will certainly leave a question mark in some – but what is Lana Del Rey if not unanswered questions?

And it is in the artist’s unpredictability that her triumph resides, which emerges on the album in the beautiful Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishingand in the striking guitars of “Let The Light In”partnership with Father John Misty.

Between successes and failures, news and nostalgia, one thing is certain: the inimitable style of the oneiric universe of Del Rey remains imprinted, more than ever, on his new album. Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? is, anyway, Lana being Lana.