She laughs when I ask where the inspiration came from: "A good question. Sad Girl, for instance, talks about how "being a mistress on the side, might not appeal to fools like you". "But with this album I felt less like I had to chronicle my journeys and more like I could just recount snippets in my recent past that felt exhilarating to me."įrom the handful of songs I get to hear at the hotel, it's safe to say the new material has plenty to get the bloggers worked up about again. "I mean, I still feel that way," she says. "It was all bad, all of it."ĭel Rey says she's not scared to put another record out because she "knows what to expect this time", but during the two-and-a-half years since Born to Die came out, she has often dismissed the idea of a follow-up because she'd "already said everything I wanted to say". "I never felt any of the enjoyment," she says. I ask how long she got to enjoy the success of Video Games before the backlash arrived and she looks surprised. Yet no sooner had the plaudits started rolling in (the Guardian voted it the best song of 2011) than Del Rey was placed under the intense scrutiny of endless blogposts and think pieces, with critics poring over her past for evidence of fakery: was her carefully studied aesthetic for real? Was she really just a major label puppet? Had her dad funded a previous bid for fame? Were her lips the result of plastic surgery? Was she really born as plain old Elizabeth Grant rather than emerging from the womb fully formed as the popstar Lana Del Rey? Arriving seemingly out of nowhere (although Del Rey had been posting her songs and homemade videos for some time), the video's Lynchian creepiness cast a spell on almost everyone who saw it, causing the song to go viral.
Perhaps the logical place to start, then, is with the extraordinary reaction to Video Games, her breakthrough song in 2011. Telling her story – a remarkable one that involves homelessness, biker gangs and being caught in the eye of a media hurricane – also involves working out why a songwriter who has sold more than 7m copies of her last album, Born To Die seems so disillusioned with life.
Throughout our hour-long conversation she keeps returning to dark themes. "And I'm like: 'Yeah, a really fucked-up movie.'" "Family members will come on the road with me and say: 'Wow, your life is just like a movie!'" she says at one point. So serene is the setting, in fact, that it takes me by surprise when Del Rey begins to tell me how unhappy she is: that she doesn't enjoy being a pop star, that she feels constantly targeted by critics, that she doesn't want to be alive at all. "E"This place is magical," she says, sparking up the first of many cigarettes.
Even her laptop has been doused in tomato ketchup, temporarily thwarting our attempts to hear songs from her new album Ultraviolence. Even inside Del Rey's elegant suite there is carnage: suitcases half-exploded bags of corn chips strewn across the floor. Head in the opposite direction and you can expect to be assaulted by the vibrant brass of the French Quarter's street jazz musicians. A couple of blocks from Lana Del Rey's hotel lies Bourbon Street, the scene of drunken rampages from morning till night. We're in New Orleans, a city not known for peace and quiet. I would be scared if I knew was coming, but …"
If it wasn't that way, then I wouldn't say it. Pre-order The Other Side of Make-Believe on vinyl."I do! I don't want to have to keep doing this. I felt a rare sensation of purpose biting on the end of my fishing rod and I was compelled to reel it in.” Says guitarist Daniel Kessler, “The process of writing this record and searching for tender, resonant emotions took me back to teenage years it was transformative, almost euphoric. They made it with Flood and Alan Moulder, whose combined credits include My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails and U2, to name three. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Interpol's debut album, Turn on the Bright Lights, but the band are looking forward too with the release of their seventh album. Interpol - The Other Side of Make-Believe "The pandemic ironically gave me the time and space to develop and arrange the songs.” While A State of Grace is missing textural guitarist Terry Bickers, it was made with producer Warne Livesay who worked on the band's 1992 album Babe Rainbow. “It is the best set of songs I have written for years," says House of Love frontman Guy Chadwick of House of Love's first album in nine years.