Across the Multiverse
Almost anything can change your world, especially music.
It’s impossible to know in the moment but — whether the future is a hell-scape or heavenly oasis — two enduring cultural artifacts of Spring 2021 will likely be the quiet, slow-burning riot of a record that is Chemtrails Over the Country Club and the bloated nerd-core bonanza of the re-cut Justice League.
Their simultaneous arrival one weekend was a coincidence of timing and their connection in this space is no more than a conceit to suit the Author’s purpose. But when every narrative universe is actually a multiverse of alternative timelines, the true possessor of superpowers to expand and collapse time, to hold us in suspension for transport to alien states, is not the Superman or the Flash but a millennial musician who goes by the alias Lana Del Rey.
In the modern Age of Heroes, Bruce Wayne is right that being rich allows him to claim the mantle of Great Power. You can buy your way into any club, including the Justice League. For Lana, the tale of trust fund kid who used her father’s money to fine tune a persona, image, and name into a pop career will always be part of the narrative. But absent assets and abs, true superpowers have a mysterious origin. There’s an alchemy that defies quantification. Music qualifies as such a superpower. Even at its most TikTok, music seizes the soul of its listener and elicits a confrontation with consciousness. It may annoy you or move you but its force will be felt.
Just as Bruce Wayne’s cash does not explain the Batman that emerged from the cave, the rich dad who made his kid famous does not capture the power of Lana Del Rey’s music. But as is often the case with superpowers, it can be difficult to describe their exact nature or delineate their precise parameters.
For this purpose, the Author finds it useful to see it as a confluence of influences. To triangulate Lana’s powers in Chemtrails, we hear the graceful melodic sensibility of Joni Mitchell whom she name-checks and proceeds to cover alongside her own SuperSquad of lesser-known-though-worthy musicians Zella Day and Weyes Blood. We experience the shadowy, ruminative perceptiveness of Leonard Cohen when she claims that fame "is dark but just a game, so play it like a symphony.” Finally, there is the complex cultural contradictions of Dolly Parton presenting as a superficial, delicate flower while wielding deep emotional hammer-drops with the strength of a juggernaut: “Clementine isn’t just a fruit, it’s my daughter’s chosen name.”
Chemtrails is an exhibition of how masterfully Lana has honed these abilities. Soft and whispery throughout, the full effect leaves a listener stunned. In no instance on this record does she resort to the quick tricks of catchy hooks or infectious dance beats. Instead, Lana conjures long-form meandering melodies that draw us in with the allure of mystery. She slowly mines the tension in the phrase “Not all who wander are lost” with a searching repetition until an answer is found: “just wanderlust.” Fans will raise online armies to see a fabled Director’s cut because we need our narratives resolved. Lana Del Rey has mastered this kind of extended release.
If the music is the power, the voice is the vessel. It takes special abilities to sing convincingly about feeling “invincible” while sounding so vulnerable, to deny being “invisible” in a such a ghostly voice. Lana’s ‘Lasso of Truth’ reveals worlds that were and weren’t based on moments we can only name in hindsight. In a recurring theme, songs identify a time past, not necessarily innocent: “when I was waitress wearing white dress.” Choices made then may have seemed inconsequential, yet it is from these points that the dimensions unfold: “I left Calabasas, escaped all the ashes… and it made me wild, wild at heart.”
Forged in fire or emerging from ice, origin stories can be canonical or alternative. The rise of Lana Del Rey has embraced both. Ever since her brilliant under-appreciated sophomore album Paradise when she sang about “a groupie incognito acting like a real singer,” she has acknowledged her pre-fab façade while undermining its foundations with every expression of her artistry. Fantasy comics mine magical objects and fringe physics to allow heroes to be reborn or live alternate lives as villains. Lana needs no mother boxes or infinity stones to alter her narrative. Perceptions of her are themselves a fantasy that her powers can shape at will.