Chemtrails Over the Country Club
| Lana Del Rey
Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Chemtrails over the Country Club is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. It was released on March 19, 2021 by Interscope Records and Polydor Records. The album was produced by Del Rey and Jack Antonoff,and features additional production contributions from Rick Nowels, whom Del Rey worked with on past studio albums. A cover of Joni Mitchell's 1970 song "For Free", featuring American singer-songwriters Zella Day and Weyes Blood, is included in the album. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
The singer looks beyond the San Gabriel Mountains and longs for stability on her most introspective album yet.
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The Guardian
Her usual themes of nostalgia, troubled fame and ne’er-do-well lovers are trotted out again – but the melody writing is stronger than ever.
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The Washington Post
Del Rey’s delicate phrasing used to sound torchy and indulgent, but now, as she floats higher into her falsetto, her singing has become meticulous and fine spun, evoking the fragility of people and the memories perpetually evaporating inside their heads. The supporting instruments — pianos, guitars and drums that barely get touched — work to that end, too, consistently erasing your awareness of their presence in real time.
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Vulture
It could be lighter for her if she adapted a bit and explained herself less. But keeping the same energy is core to the Lana Del Rey experience. The paradox remains alluring.
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ABC News
“Chemtrails Over The Country Club” has all Del Rey’s staples — angelic layered vocals, bridges that bring a second dimension to tracks and tongue-in-cheek lyrics.
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The Irish Times
A low-key masterpiece.
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Consequence of Sound
Chemtrails over the Country Club is a gorgeous listen: charming, clever, and vulnerable. Del Rey is as effective as ever in painting American fantasies, evoking nostalgia for realities always out of reach. For all her allusions, she recalls Whitman – the potent and contradictory center of her own iconography. She may sing about escaping fame, but she’s also finely attuned to the fact that tragedy is sweeter if you never escape and sweetest if you gilded the cage yourself.
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Slant Magazine
The album is a compelling, if minor, chapter in the artist’s ongoing saga of fatalistic romanticism.
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Slate
Lana Del Rey Returns As Her Most Comically Glamorous Self.
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Gigwise
Complex, consistent and completely irresistible.
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Uproxx
Chemtrails, like all LDR albums, still feels like a unified piece of work that, in spite of some wan songwriting lapses, manages to cast a mesmerizing spell. From the time she entered the indie sphere in 2012 as an overnight star with the beguiling single “Video Games,” Del Rey has been a master of vibe. Like all vibes, it falls apart if you think about it too hard or attempt to deconstruct it by parsing the lyrics or dwelling on the derivative musical references. But if you let it waft over you like a scented candle or an Isabella Rossellini torch song, it will seep deep into your system.
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Clash Magazine
A record that thrives on the most miniscule of details, ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’ is a project that rewards patience. Lana Del Rey seeks to slow down time, and lower the temperature of the air; it’s a world away from the chart-bound fireworks of her glossy peers, but its no less creative. An enchanting listen, her world-building remains absolutely undimmed on this triumphant, bewitching project.
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The Times
the artist launches her best image yet. Herself.
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Hotpress
American star returns with intimate seventh album.
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Brooklyn Vegan
some of her most minimal, freeing music yet.
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Evening Standard
A lot of this album sounds improvised, loosely held together, and more introverted than its grand, dazzling predecessor, Norman F***ing Rockwell! Like its creator, it’s off in a world of its own, free of commercial obligations and revelling in that autonomy. It’s a lovely place to visit.
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All Music
It's on an entirely different page than the club-ready remixes of her earlier material, but with Chemtrails Over the Country Club, Del Rey shows her softest moments can be her most powerful.
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Tech2.org
Bold and Beautiful.
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i-D
It's been a bumpy couple of years but with her new album, Lana proves that she's still one of the most important artists we've got.
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Paste Magazine
Chemtrails Over the Country Club is a record full of euphoric highs and baffling lows. It’s an enjoyable listen that cinematically celebrates Del Rey’s vocal prowess. But perhaps most importantly, it places her front and center as the scrappy protagonist no one expects to win. Victory is irrelevant, however, since she is exactly where she belongs.
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Pitchfork
Lana Del Rey’s sixth album dials back the grandiosity in favor of smaller, more intimate moments. It carries a roaming spirit of folk and Americana without losing the romantic melodrama of her best work.
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EW
Chemtrails is less a full transformation than the first step forward in another direction. Ultimately, the more famous Del Rey becomes, the less she'll seemingly care about fame. The richer she becomes, the less she'll care about riches. The more acclaimed she becomes, the less she'll care about praise. She might not be playing for free, but she's beginning to make choices as though she were.
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The Telegraph
Lana Del Rey's Chemtrails Over the Country Club is a gorgeous musing on the price of fame.
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The Arts Desk
She is authentically artificial, honestly romantic, a self-conscious construct lit with her voice’s sensual glow.
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Far Out Magazine
The record certainly isn’t breaking any new ground, or converting anyone who previously didn’t care for her records, but those who have fallen head over heels for Del Rey’s hedonistic doused sounds over the last decade will devour every last second of Chemtrails Over The Country Club.
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PopMatters
Though 'Chemtrails Over the Country Club' isn't quite Lana Del Rey's strongest album or the most iconically Lana, it's an intimate, emotional, and largely successful renewal of her artistic vows.
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Northern Transmissions
Lana Del Rey returns with another incredibly strong set of songs on her new LP Chemtrails Over the Country Club.
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The Independent
Damn-near impossible to resist.
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NME
The star follows up her career-high 'Norman Fucking Rockwell!' with another stunning album, one that aches with meditations on fame and romance.
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Stereogum
Chemtrails is a small, hushed, pretty little record.
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The Line of Best Fit
Moments like these are what keep Del Rey’s preoccupations with glamour and high society poignant rather than gross. Yes, she is in The Club, but she’s not seeking a way to remain, she’s seeking a way out.
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inews
a beautiful bid for freedom.
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Giglist
‘Chemtrails over the Country Club’ is Lana Del Rey’s second single from her forthcoming album of the same name, finding Del Rey harking back earlier works, melodically, whilst keeping a toe in the sonic world of the acclaimed Norman Fucking Rockwell!.
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AV Club
If any mid-sized indie artists released this album, it would be received well. But the issue is that it’s coming from someone capable of artistic genius, not making it worth the wait.
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The Wall Street Journal
The album features the singer’s signature moodiness but lacks the vivid imagery that made its predecessor, ‘Norman F—ing Rockwell!,’ a smash success.
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SXU Student Media
Chemtrails Over the Country Club overall carries the essence of jazz, folk, pop, and alternative pop. Topped off with her dreamlike vocals, the album is laced with surreal sophistication.
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Variety
“Chemtrails” is a progression in some ways but a holding pattern in others — we’re most interested to see where she goes next.
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UNF Spinnaker
Overall, I did not like this album. I am not someone who listens to Lana Del Rey, but it seems that even for her it was very underwhelming. The album sort of dissolved into a stream of same-ness and I didn’t like that. There were a couple of good songs but this was not a good intro for people who don’t listen to Lana Del Rey.
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Our Culture
Chemtrails itself is a mix of Lana’s more modern trip-hop stylings and the traditional America she’s always been influenced by, but her voice often fades into the background, and ending with another singer’s voice seems to be as much an acknowledgment of that as it is a sign of sisterhood.
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Los Angeles Times
dreamy new masterpiece.
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Happy Magazine
It was refreshing to hear Lana be more experimental with the raspiness of her voice, particularly in White Dress. Her almost formulaic tone is undoubtedly present in this record, and despite critics saying there might not be much range in this album, fans will no doubt appreciate her ageless quality.
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Riff Magazine
Songs like the mellow, folky-electronic “Dark But Just a Game” encompass the album’s intent, with pops of haunting instrumentation trickling throughout. Unfortunately, gems like this get a bit lost in the sleepiness of the rest of the album.
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MTSU Sidelines
“Chemtrails Over The Country Club” showcases Lana’s lyrical complexity that keeps her listeners intrigued. Her lofty vocals are somber and sweet, yet she wails about some of the deepest things we deal with in life. While listening to “Chemtrails,” I found myself in a mix of “chilling out,” but also listening intently. Lana continues to stand out in the music industry as a large influence on Americana music.
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Chicago Haze
Chemtrails reads as a well-constructed if somewhat lackluster folk record that mythologizes the experience of the American singer-songwriter. But if you’re on the outside looking in, it’s just another chapter in the confusing book of Lana’s role in pop culture.
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Daily Bruin
“Chemtrails Over The Country Club” is a reminder of Del Rey’s distinct artistic growth at its finest. The singer has vehemently changed the symbolism and lyrics of her songwriting to be as vulnerable and simple as possible in comparison to the theatrical “Born to Die.” Yet her melodies, emotions and nostalgia infused in the songs are just as beautiful as before.
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DIY Magazine
The confidence feels diminished, the rich production of its predecessor replaced by something thinner, sadder.
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The Upcoming
Rather than breaking completely new ground, this album is a continuation of the cinematic narrative first explored on Born to Die, and it’s arguably the closest she has come to replicating her debut’s simplicity, albeit in a more refined manner. Chemtrails might not stray far from a tried-and-tested formula, but it doesn’t need to. This is lowkey Lana at her most delicate, proving the prolific artist to be as alluring as ever. She drives in her own lane and it’s always a thrill to be her passenger.
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Louder Than War
Fresh from a spoken word poetry collection that nobody asked for, but somehow seemed the most ‘Lana’ thing ever, Chemtrails Over The Country Club is a beautiful record that should delight fans and infuriate detractors in equal measure.
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Spectrum Pulse
she’s done more with this material better, and it’s just too sleepy and forgettable to stand as more than a footnote in her story… at least for now.
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Nylon
The gently lulling songs on her seventh studio album plumb middle America and are her most elemental to date.
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Beats Per Minute
Chemtrails Over The Country Club is 100% a Lana Del Rey record that fits quaintly into her discography. Anyone following her up to this point shouldn’t bat an eye at how sharp of a left turn this is compared to her previous album. She’s absurdly contrived, but the allure is far too captivating to look away.
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Sputnik Music
Quite simply and bluntly, Chemtrails is exactly what people who hate Lana thinks she sounds like all the time. So Lana needn't worry about being criticized for double standards anymore; the only thing this music will be criticized for will be making probably the best unintentional sleeping pill on the market.
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The Courier Online
However, her public image aside, this album shows Lana’s musical ability is still in its prime, and Chemtrails Over The Country Club is a fine addition to her discography.
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New Sounds
A nod towards Lady Gaga’s style in the Jolene album. If Lana had have branched out into this style more throughout the album, it’d be a much higher rating from me. Perhaps she needs a little more courage before she completely breaks her tried and tested approach.
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Under the Radar Magazine
Whilst it isn’t the universal smash hit that Norman F**king Rockwell instantly was, you get the feeling that Chemtrails Over the Country Club is a slow burner, whose flame will ignite the next chapter of Del Rey’s career and all the many splendid opportunities that brings with it.
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Song Bar
Evoking big, wide landscapes with a slow, melancholic, wistful, nostalgic and semi-fictional narratives, the New York singer-songwriter’s eighth album is of uniform style and slow pace, but rich in powerfully strong melodies and memorable lines.
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B-Sides TV
Chemtrails is filled with soft piano ballads and wafting folk-americana tracks, that turn the listener’s attention to Lana’s lyricism.
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The Forty-Five
During a period that's tailor-made for navel-gazing and nostalgia, Lana has produced yet another timely record for us to brood over.
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Thomas Bleach
‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’ is a record that is designed to play over the crackle of a vinyl player and soundtrack a rainy afternoon or evening in bed with the one you love, or alone and mourning the absence of them.
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The Signal
Lana Del Rey makes her comeback with ‘Chemtrails over the Country Club’.
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Beat
Although surrounded by lots of controversy, Lana created another amazing album. It feels very sincere and it is a gorgeous project. I really enjoyed this album, and it might be in my top three albums of Lana’s.
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Hypebeast
Past albums portray Del Rey as a melancholic romantic yearning for a time before, however, with Chemtrails Over the Country Club, she becomes more realistic while maintaining her air of nostalgia — in short, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. With this in mind, the singer has left an era of orchestral songs from her “Young and Beautiful” period and replaces this with plenty of acoustics and delicate percussion that complements a raw-sounding Lana, one which seems to be speaking about more truthful subjects as depicted in songs such as “White Dress.”
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Digis Mak
Bold and Beautiful.
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Medium
I wish I loved Chemtrails Over the Country Club. Maybe this album just isn’t for me. Or maybe I’ve outgrown Lana Del Rey.
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The Daily Campus
‘Chemtrails over the Country Club’ is a lovely effort from Lana Del Rey.
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Riot Magazine
In all this is a good effort, it doesn’t re-invent the wheel, and it doesn’t have the evolution that her last effort promised. It’s another Lana Del Rey album.
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Daily Titan
Lana Del Rey's new album delivers serene listening experience.
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