Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Released

On her fifth or sixth album, Lana Del Rey goes for a widescreen version of Seventies singer-songwriter soft rock, and gets as close as she’s ever gotten to transcendence while also offering some of her funniest, most acerbic lines (“God damn, man-child/You fucked me so good I almost said ‘I love you’”; “They mistook my kindness for weakness/I fucked up, I know that, but Jesus/Can’t a girl just do the best she can?”). Amid the gently picked acoustic guitars and romantic strings, there are moments of genuine weirdness, like the second half of the nearly 10-minute “Venice Bitch,” much of which is taken up by a squiggly prog-AOR synth solo. Then there’s the fact that she calls a song “Cinnamon Girl” that owes exactly nothing to Neil Young, but offers an earnest cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time,” not changing a single word of the lyrics and thereby indicating with perfect clarity which artist means more to her.

Phil Freeman

Suggestions
Summer Sun cover

Summer Sun

Yo La Tengo
Star-Crossed cover

Star-Crossed

Kacey Musgraves
Melody’s Echo Chamber cover

Melody’s Echo Chamber

Melody's Echo Chamber
Benji cover

Benji

Sun Kil Moon
Clipper Ship cover

Clipper Ship

Wooden Wand
Overseas cover

Overseas

Overseas
Barton Hollow cover

Barton Hollow

The Civil Wars
Thalassa cover

Thalassa

Ioanna Gika
Ruins cover

Ruins

Grouper
Singing Saw cover

Singing Saw

Kevin Morby