You remember that meme from a couple years back about how everything seems more epic when it's set to Sigur Rós music? That's a pretty nice way of summing up how I feel about Lana Del Rey's Born to Die album, which leaked Tuesday (January 24) and which you may very well be listening to on your computer/ mobile device at this very moment.Simply put, it is a record that is positively brimming with atmospherics — soaring, sonorous strings, echoing electronic boom-bap, morose, maudlin guitar crescendos — all of which imbue it with a truly epic (if not unnecessarily dramatic) scope. Lasagna Del Rey's critics will undoubtedly point out that scope as nothing more than cover for her perceived shortcomings as a performer, but it still makes Born to Die a rather thrilling headphones experience. This is an album that sounds like it cost a million bucks to make — mostly because it probably did.
This is not to say that Born to Die is a bad album — far from it. In fact, it's certainly w-a-a-y better than most would've expected (tellingly, even less will admit to that fact), and Del Rey does showcase some rather deft songwriting prowess — or at least a knack for penning a catchy chorus — particularly on the album's few bright moments, like "Off to the Races," "Diet MTN Dew" and "Radio."
The majority of the tracks you've already heard — "Born to Die," "Blue Jeans," "Video Games" — are prominently placed at the front of the album, and the back half does tend to drag a bit, though, aside from all the additional ephemera (which does leave the album sounding a bit same-y, not to mention cribbed from the Portishead playbook, circa 1997), those are perhaps my biggest criticisms about the album.