“Tulsa Jesus Freak” describes a runaway lover. This longing for “normality” seeps into “Chemtrails Over The Country Club,” the album’s title piece that includes the lines “take out your turquoise and all of your jewels” and “meet you for coffee at the elementary school.” The tune intends to make the listener evermore grateful for what many consider to be “boring” activities. The closing line to “White Dress,” “it kinda makes me feel like maybe I was better off,” blends the song’s nostalgic vibe into a cohesive reach for the past. It’s clear this is no up-beat, cheery pop album, though if you know Lana’s signature somber sound, this will come as no surprise. In the piano-driven introduction, she describes the freedoms taken by fame and wistfully recalls a time when she “wasn’t famous, just listening to Kings of Leon to the beat.” The opener, “White Dress,” shares the same “price of fame” theme as Joni Mitchell’s “For Free,” which closes this album.

Lana pulls aspects of this music into her own, using its principles to translate her emotions into song. The roots of this album, like her others, are the acoustic tunes of the past that she so avidly appreciates. Yet, after listening to the album repeatedly - perhaps religiously - over the past week, I feel that calling it stellar would do it no justice. Now on her seventh release, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the expectations are higher than ever before. Worth mentioning is 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell, an album which continues to receive critical and commercial praise (AnalogPlanet’s Malachi Lui has it on his top albums of the 2010s list!).

Since the release of her Americana inspired breakthrough single, “Video Games,” in 2011, she’s gone on to release six studio albums. As most music consumers jump between formats, I often ask myself, “Why move past something that works so well?” Lana Del Rey, an enthusiast of all things vintage, asks the same question, only with music. Nothing beats the magic of the vinyl record.

AnalogPlanet readers and writers alike are quite familiar with this sentiment. Lana Del Rey is living proof that what’s old will come around, and what’s new isn’t always better.

Lana del rey wild at heart