Ever since Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey has been tunneling deeper into her personal vernacular. The lyrics to her new single, “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” learn like a pidgin creole of her treasured American ephemera. The John Deere mower from “Blue Bannisters” makes a return; she trades Cocoa Puffs for Rice Krispies, hissing “snap, crackle, pop” like a wretched Keebler elf peering out of a tree hole. “Take my hand off the range,” Del Rey coos, “Understand how completely unhealthy I’m with an oven.” Chilling phrases from our resident Sylvia Plath, or a self-recrimination about her baking abilities?
We wouldn’t have a Lana Del Rey love music every other manner. That is the girl who has been accused of channeling demonic power at her concert events, who positioned a hex on our present president throughout his first time period. Inside her potent brew are traces of Buffy Saint-Marie’s early Buchla experiments, downtown eccentrics like Laura Nyro and Lotti Golden, and classic Disney soundtracks. The supply of this voodoo, or maybe its object, is Del Rey’s husband, Jeremy Dufrene, who’s additionally credited as a co-writer: “We’re a match, he’s simply in my bone marrow.” After a profession spent writing paeans to deadbeats and douchebags, in fact her tackle real love feels like a horror film.
