Ultraviolence

It’s relentless, beautiful and supernatural. Ultraviolence is an album I have never been able to put down since I first found it last year. But it took me time to appreciate it, to really hear the words and feel the sentiments of Lana Del Ray. The darkness that envelopes you throughout; it’s like a layer of smoke, a ghostly fog in the streets that is always present. This makes it impossible to pull away from the haunting vocal textures, restless guitars and drums that softly guide you from one scene to the next. This is cinema. This is music you swear you can see and feel, if you just extend your fingertips far enough.

Her crowd pleasing album ‘Born To Die’ had the strings, the vibe, the cinema and the pop that we all yearned for, that made us sigh in relief that someone did it and it was ours to hear. I loved that album, but I was cynical of her when it came to me in my first year of university. I wasn’t sure if I liked the fad that came with her. I felt girls were getting the wrong end of the stick so I closed my ears for a while until the noise died down. Thats when I really found her, by myself, when I needed her. An artist like Lana needs time to absorb. So here I am, completely consumed day in day out by Ultraviolence, the album I dubbed my ‘transition album’ last year as I travelled between places in a state of graduate limbo. But it took even longer to appreciate. I had to really listen, almost against my will in places, like reading a very intense and rewarding book that demands your focus.

It begins with the wonderful 6.39 minute song ‘Cruel World’, a constant serene drama that loops over and over again. You think it will never end; you hope it doesn’t. A daring beginning for a ‘pop’ artist, but one that immediately caught me in its endless web.

‘Ultraviolence’ the title track that follows, is what I would consider the most like her previous works, but even then it has something so much more. A different tone. A maturity that wasn’t there before.

I see ‘Shades of Cool’ as a filler to earth us back to the girl she’s showing us now. Its purpose is to draw us back to the command of her voice as it reverberates all around.

‘Brooklyn Baby’ and ‘West Coast’ have a playfulness to them. They reflect the sexuality that we see in her as a person, that her refined physical beauty brings to the table. We sway with her in ‘Brooklyn Baby’, and get down with her in ‘West Coast’. We feel a hunger the way she does, and respond to the deep whispered notes and the chorused sirens of her voice with an excitable chill.

By now we have reached a point of no return, as ‘Sad Girl’ hits a soft spot, preparing us for ‘Pretty When You Cry’ - a solemn moan for attention that every girl feels when they are alone in their bedroom, overthinking their romances yet again. This is one of the moments when we really see her as a narrator of love the way it is really felt. 

For a very long time ‘Money Power Glory’ was my favourite song on the album. I absolutely couldn’t get over it. The duality of religion and oneupmanship expressed in a pounding wailing chorus, contrasted with a soft and sensitive verse where the subject hopelessly discusses what can and can’t be. “You say that you want to go to a land thats far away, how are we supposed get there with the way that we’re living today?”. Is she discussing the afterlife and heaven? Or merely escapism with the one she loves? This song is tragic and powerful. It commands you.

I want money, power and glory,

I want money, and all your power, and all your glory,

'Allelujah, 

I'm gonna take you for all that you've got.

'Allelujah, 

I'm gonna take them for all that they've got.

I imagine a similar male character like the one described in the very first song 'Cruel World'. A man of false virtue, with his gun in hand, bible in other, screwing people over again and again to work his way to the top and find his financial heaven. But you wonder with the constantly swapping perspective of this song whether Lana is in fact the one seeking the glory, perhaps she has moved from the girl she was in Cruel World, a girl of sensitivity and weakness, and has transcended to the woman who controls the game, right at the top.

This leads us to what I consider another thought provoking and powerful song. 'Fucked My Way Up to the Top' is forceful and driving. It is lyrically topical within pop culture, as well assertive in it's beauty.

'Old Money' is the deep, seductive and hopeless ballad we were waiting for. Unyielding piano chords set the mood of a girl waiting at her window, reciting beautiful descriptive symbols she remembers from a past time in New York City. 'Old Money' describes faded glamour, past riches, and someone who would do anything to revisit this place again, the romantic fantasy inside her head created so many years ago.

The album finishes with 'The Other Woman', a restless song about two contrasting females, both competing in their own way for the love and attention of the same man. It is vocally loose and relaxed, with operatic moments towards the end. It ends with the solitary word 'alone', as the strings fade out, giving an anti-climatical response for the listener, who feels a story isn't finished with this the end of the album. Personally I feel 'Old Money' would have been a more beautiful ending to the album. But the truth is, Lana doesn't deal in perfection. By not leaving us with the obvious - a piano ballad - more respect is felt on my part as the listener. She had all the cards, but she shuffled the deck and gave us something we didn't expect.

AKC x