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Lana Del Rey review – mid-century melodrama as mindblowing stadium spectacle
The US singer-songwriter graduates to the UK’s biggest venues with a theatrical show to match, featuring a house on fire, Allen Ginsberg recitals and some very real tears
Lana Del Rey is standing in a blue-on-white summer dress in front of a wood-panelled house, crying real tears next to plastic weeping willows, momentarily overcome by the size of the audience staring back at her. During Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Ultraviolence, she falls to the floor in Busby Berkeley-esque arrangements alongside her dancers, her vocals now steely as power chords and pulsing red lights ratchet up the drama. Aside from wasting two killer songs, it creates an unwanted break in the dialogue she maintains between artist and audience elsewhere – there aren’t many stadium spectacles driven by the gut-level understanding found in Del Rey’s plea to the room during a mesmerising Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd: “Don’t forget me.” Not a chance.
Or read this on The Guardian
