Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Lana Del Ray, Universal Music/Interscope/Polydor 2021.
Chemtrails Over The Country Club is the seventh studio album by American singer/songwriter Lana Del Ray and it debuted at number two in the Billboard Top 200, maintaining her perfect record of reaching the Top 10 with every release.
This album follows on beautifully from her previous album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, which was released in 2019 and in many ways the two albums can be seen as one extended work.
They were both produced by Del Ray in collaboration with Jack Antonoff on Chemtrails Over The Country Club and Rick Nowels on both Norman Fucking Rockwell and Chemtrails.
Over the last two albums Lana has been experimenting with a different writing style based on the French term Roman-a-clef, which is writing about real things, people, relationships etc, in a fictionalised way.
This novelisation approach, that first appeared for the Norman F Rockwell album, has been continued with Chemtrails, this time with the songs about incidents and people a lot closer to home, and therefore a lot more personal and emotional.
She comments that “so much of the album pertains to my stunning girlfriends and beautiful siblings.”
Del Ray contends that this album is a sunnier side of her personality than the previous effort, and in many ways it is.
There is certainly an innocence in this one rather than the anger and bitterness that occasionally surfaced in Rockwell.
This is probably due to the change in focus from the big end of town and the stardom industry of Norman F Rockwell to subjects and people who are part of her inner circle.
The subdued atmosphere of these last albums is a long way from the pop of her earliest recordings, albeit those albums always hinted at a much deeper presence within.
Chemtrails Over The Country Club reveals an artist who is a master of her craft, both as a writer and also as a producer.
These songs are complex and yet enticing and they almost demand multiple listens to unravel their depths.
No less a luminary than Joan Baez has endorsed Lana Del Ray into the pantheon of great female singer/songwriters. Who would I be to disagree with her?
