NFR!

I love this one, it's definitely very different from her other works but it doesn't make it bad like at all.

I’m resentful at: Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, aka Lana Del Rey The Cause: She’s written a perfect album about love and lust and codependency and recovery, one that creates an illusion of intimacy with the listener; even though I know it’s an act, it feels like it’s about me. And I know it’s not, and that I’ll never meet her, which is probably for the best, given that I’m happily married with two fantastic kids, but that in turn creates a wistful feeling of melancholy about the impossibilities of life. She sold this album under an imperfect piece of cover art—one that feeds the “I’m reaching out to you” vibe but also has a somewhat garish color scheme, and references Roy Lichtenstein rather than the titular Norman Rockwell—so it took me a while to realize that it was, in fact, the best album released in the last year or so. She’s almost eight years younger than me, but she’s already released a universally acclaimed and widely available masterpiece. Affects My: Self-esteem (fear), Security, Sexual relations My part: I need to understand and accept the unequal nature of the artist/audience relationship; despite my ego’s protests to the contrary, the connection I have with Lana Del Rey is no more substantial than the one I have with, say, Billie Holliday. Or to reference yet another excellent female songwriter, I am so vain that I do, in fact, think these songs are about me. But rather than living in self-pity that they’re not, I need to be grateful that they exist, and accept that getting this album is literally the best possible outcome for all concerned, especially myself. I’ve spent enough time in recovery from alcoholism and associated diseases that I’ve absorbed a bit of the verbiage that inevitably crops up in any group of like-minded people “organized” (a very very very loose concept in recovery) around a common purpose. So I recognize (in the words of Robert Stone) “the diction of addiction,” and can’t help spotting it in a host of art, and artist interviews. Del Rey’s spoken about quitting drinking and drugs at a relatively young age, and the lyrics here suggest she’s done that by going to some of the same types of rooms I have, and meeting the same types of people. (For one, “church-basement romances” seems like a clear nod at where many recovery meetings meet, and what many members end up trying once they’re there, for better or worse. [Either they’ve found true love—which I’ve seen—or they’re tripped up because the neurological pathways alcohol works on are also serviced by physical affection, such that desperate dry drunks will end up in flawed relationships to unconsciously feed those needs, rather than doing the hard work of recovery.] And “serving up God in a burnt coffee pot for the triad” feels like another recovery reference; making coffee for a meeting—inevitably out of some battered communally-owned pot, with group-purchased tube-containers of economy-size powdered creamer and sugar next to it—is a standard job for a newcomer who needs a weekly service commitment; “the triad” reads as a clear reference to the UNITY-SERVICE-RECOVERY triangle on a standard recovery coin. Although who knows? Maybe she’s a waitress for Chinese gangsters.) At any rate, the same qualities which have stood me well in recovery (fearlessness, trust, openness, a willingness to take a deep look at the dark corners of one’s own psyche) have evidently served Lana as well; “Is it safe to just be who we are?” she asks in a touchingly vulnerable moment on “Love Song.” It’s a common conundrum for those of us who’ve quit drugs and alcohol: it’s relatively easy to find someone to get undressed with; it’s a lot harder to find someone to let down our guard with emotionally, who will in turn respond in a healthy manner. (“All the pills that you take—violet, blue, green, red—to keep me at arm’s length won’t work,” she sings on “Cinnamon Girl,” and on “California” she talks about buying an unhealthy lover “your favorite liquor from the top shelf.” So like many of us, she’s found that there’s no shortage of unhealthy alternatives.) One hopes for Lana/Elizabeth’s sake that she’ll get to a better place, romantically. “Spilling my guts with the Bowery bums is the only love I’ve ever known,” she says on “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing…” and there were years when I would have been able to relate; the warm feeling of real recovery work (with a little artistic output on the side) for years felt more authentic and real than any romance; there’s something about cracked-linoleum church basements or dingy inner-city communal rehab rooms or jail decks reeking of body odor that can be downright magical. These songs are so consistently excellent that they get addictive; one wonders if a sober-but-somewhat-somber artist could produce them forever. But I don’t want her to keep doing the same thing over and over just to feed my unquenchable need. “Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have,” she sings on the last track, and closes with a suggestion that, for as good as all of this is, things can get better still. Hope—that real and genuine optimism, the kind that runs the risk of leading us into disappointment, or just the realization that there’s more hard work to do—is dangerous indeed. “But I’ve got it,” she says, as quietly and insistently as a prayer. I’ve got it, indeed.

Absolutely incredible. Purchased it on cassette in 2020, crazy yes but played back on my WM-D6C the quality of the master is crystal clear, beautiful recording. Beautifully sung and songs that seem to take you along until all of a sudden you're at the end and the cassette player goes "cuh-chunk!" to signal the end of the tape bringing you out of your daze. LDR has a voice that can make your entire world disappear into nothing but the turning reels of tape in front of your eyes and the audio coming through the headphones. Would recommend purchasing.

The case is a bit delicate and could crack easily, so store it properly. Otherwise the sound quality from the tape is about average for what's done today. More of a collector's item.

Back in 2012 when "Video Games" was making some waves, that's when I first checked into Lana Del Rey. I liked "Video Games", and I think I listened to the sound samples of "Born to Die" without picking out anything else. Then came the conspiracy theories and SNL performance. At that point, I checked out. Flash forward 2019, and Songpop 2 released a Lana Del Rey playlist. It was time to check back in. To my surprise, I liked quite a number of her songs, and of course there was to be a new album as well, so for the past couple of weeks I have indulged in Lana Del Rey. Starting with her out-of-print 2010 debut, "Lana Del Ray" and moving all the way up to "NFR!" including some of her soundtrack work on "The Great Gatsby", "Maleficent" and "Big Eyes". My takeaway is that Lana Del Rey is good. She is repetitive. She reminds me of artists like Fleetwood Mac, Mazzy Star, Tricky, Sheryl Crow, a female Leonard Cohen, and Tori Amos. She definitely is working the angle of doomed Golden-era Hollywood starlet caught in a black and white film noir world. This is both her strength and weakness. Not unlike an artist such as Enya, Lana Del Rey seems trapped by her own musical stylings. Her six albums have some variation, but not too much. You could put them on random and it would all come close to sounding like one long, six hour album. And that's just it. She hasn't quite received the memo that 40 minutes is more than enough music. All of her albums are 50+ minutes (pretty much). Her last three have all been 60+ (way too long). I say you can only make a 60+ minute album if every song is fantastic. "NFR!" is not fantastic. The first think I would have done is trimmed and/or left off the album, "Venice Bitch". At nine and a half minutes it's way too long and serves no purpose other than to trip acid. Leave the 9+ minute songs to the big boys like Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Steve Winwood--they all know how to use that kind of space effectively. There are 14 tracks on "NFR!" If you cut "Venice Bitch", "Love Song", "How to Disappear", and "The Greatest", I think the remaining ten tracks would make a pretty decent album. To me, "NFR!" suffers the same excessive somberness that "Lana Del Ray" (2010) and "Holiday" (2015) suffer--too slow, too long, too many tracks. This is one reason I enjoy "Born to Die" (2012), "Ultraviolence" (2014) and "Lust for Life" (2017) the best. They aren't perfect albums, either. I don't think Lana Del Rey has made a 'classic' album yet. Those three seem like the closest she has come to it. Critics are applauding the growth and maturity on display in "NFR!" but like Leonard Cohen, maturity has nothing to do with it. It's the music. Is it too repetitive? Is it all a blur? Cohen had weak albums, too. Enya has weak albums as well. I say Lana Del Rey's key to achieving a classic album will be to diversify. The more diverse and complex the music is, the better her album will be. She is at the mercy of her band as she is primarily a singer and does not have mastery over any instrument. If she, like Tori Amos, had mastery of an instrument, she would have already made her classic album, not unlike Amos' "Little Earthquakes" (1992), Paula Cole's "This Fire" (1996), Regina Spektor's "Begin to Hope" (2006) or Imogen Heap's "Speak for Yourself" (2005). To me the standout tracks on "NFR!" are "Mariner's Apartment Complex", "F it, I Love You", the cover of Sublime's 1997 track, "Doin' Time", "Cinnamon Girl", "California", "The Next Best American Record", "Bartender", "Happiness is a Butterfly" and "Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have--but I Have It". I just want to hear more from Lana Del Rey. I think she has room to still grow and make something really great. Here's how "NFR!" compares to Lana Del Rey's previous works: 2010 Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant: Three Stars 2012 Born to Die: Four Stars 2014 Ultraviolence: Four Stars 2015 Holiday: Three and a Half Stars 2017 Lust for Life: Four Stars 2019 NFR!: Three and a Half Stars

Majestic and exhilarating. Lana is headed to a well-earned place in music's elite of elites. The music is melancholy and and insular, yet hopeful at the same time. The album is a repeat and somewhat redundant in its theme about a decadent, laid back, L.A. lifestyle that is more romance and fantasy than a workaholic like Lana would probably admit. It's not my thing (the lifestyle she goes on and on about, over and over). She tends to romanticize everything under the sun. But what a wonderful experience. The music on the album transcends genres. Sometimes she sounds country, other times a bit rap-fly girl, torch singer and so much more. I can't say enough about the twists and turns her vocals perform. Worth listening to, over and over. Way more going on in the production than I thought possible. Many of the songs' productions reminds me of when I first listened closely to Sgt. Pepper's 'Lovely Rita', wherein George Martin had a lot more going on behind the main beats and lyrics. Lana is now a legend. p/s/ Does anyone else hear Mary McGregor's ('Torn Between Two Lovers') and Sinead O'Connor's (Just Like U Said It Would B) in some of the vocals and histrionic tendencies?