Ultraviolence

While her David Lynch qualities remain, there's also something of the masochistic Lars Von Trier heroine in the resigned drowse of these songs. [Sep 2014, p.92]

Underwhelming ending aside, it’s fair to say that Del Rey (and her collaborators) have more than risen to the challenge of keeping her a part of the pop culture conversation, for all the right reasons.

The heiress-turned-songwriter spins tragic tales that further an intrigue somehow only mounting, yet they're just dubious enough to keep any artistic credibility at a cautious arm's length and thus perpetuate her core polarity.

Del Rey sounds regally removed from the box-ticking modernity of her peers, a one-woman advertisement for the appeal of the unreal. [Aug 2014, p.113]

Throughout Ultraviolence, there's a sense of musical haziness that rests in a safe zone that Del Rey either can't or won't escape from.

The album wraps desire, violence and sadness into a tight bundle that Del Rey doesn't always seem sure how to unpack.

In a career fraught with obsessions over the perfection-imperfection dichotomy, it turns out to be a blessing that she put pop and its various pressures on the backburner just to deliver some real summertime sadness.

Dan Auerbach’s production helps shape that drama, but he’s accurately interpreting her vision rather than directing Del Rey, who suddenly seems completely in control of her brand.

It's the very definition of a grower, and this record has something Born to Die never had: more reflection.

On balance, Ultraviolence is ok, tending towards pretty good. However, there is a nagging wonderment over exactly where Del Rey goes from here.

The line between self-aware irony and tragically conforming to type is thin, though, her knowing winks getting stuck in a tangle of false eyelashes, and ultimately undermining what had the potential to be a powerful artistic statement.

Ultraviolence almost qualifies as a parody. Unfortunately, there's not enough punch in the songs to make listeners care whether she's joking or not.

Auerbach offers a more sedate take on the "Born to Die" template, lightening the orchestrations, ditching the hip-hop beats, and presenting Lana as a perpetually scorned pop-noir fugitive--part Neko Case, part Katy Perry. It's a delicious contrast that makes for a surprisingly great album.

Slavishly downbeat, it burrows even deeper into Del Rey’s torchy sensibility and rarely breaks its spell.

Ultraviolence moves away from more pop-friendly territory and instead languishes in a sleepy, sad aesthetic.

Without the hip-hop beats that peppered her first album, the songs here lack a sprinkling of brashness--a little of the Kim and Kanye touch would have helped.

The characters and artifacts that surround these songs feel artificial, like stock props, but the music that Del Rey pulls them through splits them open, shakes them to life.

With Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey remains a singular figure in music, sounding (and addressing the idea of authenticity) like no one else.

It's a candlelit record, a 3 a.m. record. Turn it up loud and melt into the couch.

As an album to invest in, feel sentimental about, or be genuinely thrilled by, Ultraviolence falls short. Take it simply as a sumptuously-presented pop record, though, and you have to wonder if you’ll hear a better one this year.

Ultraviolence prioritizes mood over innovation, classicism over experimentalism, and is better for it.

Ultraviolence, a collection of mid-century ballads spiked with blues-rock, is a stunning accomplishment. Its eleven songs whimper and howl, soothe and taunt, hypnotize and thrill.

In her grand tradition of coining absurd descriptive phrases, Del Rey and Auerbach have christened all this "narco swing", an apt characterisation if only one assumes it's short for narcoleptic; it takes some doing to make sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll sound boring, but in her hands, the vices of hedonism scan as crushingly monotonous.

Ultraviolence thrives for the most part in its density, meant clearly to be absorbed as an entire experience, with even its weaker pieces contributing to a mood that's consumptive, sexy, and as eerie as big-budget pop music gets.

Ultraviolence finds one feeling--a seedy, desperate, hyper-romanticized sense of isolation and loss--and blows it up to drive-in screen proportions, saturating the color riding the blue crest of sadness for the better part of an hour. Whether or not you want to take this particular ride will largely depend on how much stock you put in “authenticity,” your tolerance for Del Rey’s vocal tics, and your reflexive response to her lyrics.

Ultraviolence is a beautiful argument for her relevance and her potential longevity.

Ultraviolence is more of the same, but less.

The end result is stylish and cogent but, as a consequence, perhaps a teensy bit samey.

Ultraviolence is the masked bacchanalia that finally unleashes the full potential lurking beneath the hype.

Ultraviolence marks real progression: never has Del Rey sounded so compellingly crystalline on a set of recordings. Thematically, though, tracks can appear content to splash in the shallows.

A record that’s a hundred times more cohesive than Born to Die.

Repeated listens reveal nuances, like the acoustic guitar bristling beneath the blues-rock verses of "Sad Girl" and the male backing vocals layering the final chorus of "Brooklyn Baby," but the album's steadfast narcotic tempo and Del Rey's languid delivery, doused in shoegaze-style reverb throughout, conjure a hazy picture of the singer swaying wearily in some sweltering sweat-lodge of a dive in the deep South.

The sound is so dense it threatens to asphyxiate the singer, which may just be the point. Everything about her work plays into fantasies of a potentially fatal manipulation.