“If you’re looking to Lana Del Rey for political statements, you are looking in the wrong place. But there’s something stirring about that creeping sense of unease — a feeling more nebulous than the “I think my boyfriend has a gun”-type stuff that past Del Rey albums have conjured. At this point, you’re either in or out on Del Rey. Her sleepy-voiced lost-generation torch songs drive a whole lot of people nuts; I’ve heard people call her “boring” in just about every conversation I’ve ever had about her. But if you tap deep enough into what Del Rey is doing, the “boring”/”not boring” distinction becomes a false binary. Del Rey’s music is about capturing a mood — a complex, varied, cinematically bummed feeling. Her music exists at the place where bliss and dread and indolence and depression all intersect, where the sight of the sun setting over the ocean becomes somehow oppressive and where the drugs are just starting to not work anymore. She’s doing her own thing, and she is doing it exquisitely. If you’re bored listening to her, it’s because you can’t — or won’t — lose yourself in her sound, which is slow and samey and turgid and almost objectively gorgeous. And if you can’t get into that headspace, who knows, maybe you’re better off. Go ride a bike or something.”

bit.ly/2uikQAZ