Rated Born To Die [Review Time]

It's been a big ol' wait, but finally Lana Del Rey's debut album Born To Die is in my hands, on my itunes and in both my ipod and iphone memories. From nobody to star in a few weeks, she is proof of the wonderful marketing tool we know as youtube. She instantly won over millions of viewers/listeners with her Nancy Sinatra tones on debut single, 'Video Games' and caused controversy with her fake lips. With an album as satisfying as this, who gives a shit?

Said debut single is still an album highlight, with gorgeous melodies layered on top of a haunting piano and Lana's sumptuous vocals gliding across the surface. There's a vulnerability and authenticity to her sound, with the odd crackle in her throat making it all sound like a live recording. The low tempo is continued with the title track, which is my personal favourite. "Oh my heart it breaks every step that I take/but I'm hoping at the gates they'll tell me that you're mine..." she sings in a lower, raspy register. 'Blue Jeans' also brims with a heartfelt message of love and passion, "I will love you till the end of time/I would wait a million years/Promise that you'll remember that you're mine."

The majority of the album is down tempo, however the pace picks up with the intoxicating 'Off to the Races', 'Summertime Sadness', and the giddy playground chants of 'Diet Mountain Dew'. The tempo crescendos, when the glorious 'National Anthem' kicks in and Lana semi raps her way through an intricately produced beauty. The chorus blows the arse out of any other song released this year. "Tell me I'm your national anthem/Booyah baby bow down making me say wow now," bites Lana as the pounding, exhilarating drum beats vibrate through your rib cage. 

It's no surprise, from the single releases, that this is an album about love, life and sex. It's dark, wouldn't go amiss as the soundtrack to a Tarantino movie and Lana's unique vocals convey every lyric perfectly. While she hasn't got an ocean wide range like some of her contemporaries, she has got something many of them hunger for, believability. This quality shines through on 'Million Dollar Man' and 'Dark Paradise', the former sounding like it's travelled forward through time about 50 years. 

This album is the most unique collection of songs to grace the popular airwaves for a long time. With brilliant songs like 'National Anthem', 'Video Games' and 'Diet Mountain Dew', it at least deserves some embrace before we're subjected to the generic, unimaginative droll of other artists littering the charts at the moment. Born to Die is a lustrous tapestry, intricate and delightfully dark, and when its threads are pulled and it fully unravels there's nothing to do but sew it back together and start the process all over again.

5/5