BY AXEL KODAT

Online | Published January 30, 2012 — Updated January 31, 2012 13:34

For those who have managed to miss the hype, Billboard cover, and general hysteria that have marked her rise, Lana Del Rey is a pop singer-songwriter who had a few Internet hits last year, whose debut album will be released on Interscope tomorrow and who has sparked a bit of controversy for reasons I’ll identify later. So now: Why do so many people hate her? What explains the hyperbolic derision that followed her SNL performance? Ok, LDR sounded really bad. And her low-register bleating, wildly unstable intonation, and sudden awkward shifts to and from falsetto appeared infinitely worse accompanied by her moody pouting and incessant preening. (Was she trying to look excessively sultry and vulnerable — it wouldn’t be the first time — or was she just extraordinarily uncomfortable?) So sure, she didn’t sound too great. But it’s not especially remarkable for someone to have a bad outing on any one of these late night shows, which invariably impose all sorts of peculiar expectations and anxieties on performers; in LDR’s case, this was her big introduction to a sizable section of the American public.

The overblown response to the SNL debacle seems to reveal an eagerness across an unusually broad section of the musically conscious public to see LDR fail. To many mainstream audiences, and especially those who were first introduced to LDR’s sound on SNL, LDR embodies the popular image of artsy-talentless-hack, colloquially equivalent with, in Brian Williams’s words, the “Brooklyn hippster [sic].”

Perhaps it is obvious that to some of the “Brooklyn hipsters,” LDR represents exactly the opposite stereotype. That is, LDR — oft-questioned authenticity, Interscope deal, hyper-sexualization, apparent lip-job and all — is a “singer-songwriter” who rose from obscurity to a major label deal with meteoric speed yet maintains an artful pretense and stylish aloofness that deliberately aligns her with a “counter-culture” increasingly conflicted about her music and image. I say “conflicted” because the alternative press has so far covered her rise, with initial praise and now increasing skepticism, caused partly by seemingly imminent mainstream success and partly by the suspicion that we are being duped. As I mentioned before, her album Born to Die is officially released tomorrow, and initial reactions appear to be predictably mixed. In one particularly vivid gem from her decidedly negative review, Pitchfork’s Lindsay Zoladz called it “the album equivalent of a faked orgasm.” I haven’t listened to the album yet, but I can’t wait to try to figure out what she means.

So why do so many people detest LDR? For one, the conflation of aesthetic or atmosphere with actual quality pervades musical culture; while style and “sound” (in the sense, “That band has a really unique sound”) are essential components of music, generalizations about particular styles or types of music excessively influence various automatic assumptions we make about what music is good or bad. Even these assumptions can be indispensable components of deciding what music to listen to, but often they allow listeners to dismiss certain artists too quickly, without pausing to appreciate that the music itself isn’t all that bad. This is the case with LDR, whose music occupies a certain over-produced, melodramatic, slowcore, Cat-Power-with-less-jazziness, pouting-chanteuse niche — not (remotely) the first thing that pops into my mind when I think of good music, but actually, occasionally, good music. Modern musicians must present a plausible image that conforms to the expectations and desires of their target audience. Lana Del Rey’s critical problem, in this department, is that her apparent audience is an essentially imagined fusion of pop and alt-culture.

Debates about LDR’s authenticity are largely irrelevant. Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, etc. were essentially invented and enjoy huge popularity, but Lana Del Rey is under attack for accusations of being some artificial label creation because she makes music haltingly targeted at an audience that expects truth in advertising. But isn’t good music truth enough? It’s the same reason I’ve always found the debate over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays both tiresome and utterly irrelevant. Why does it matter who wrote them if they’re quality works of art?

(OK, I know I’m sort of half-defending her here, but let’s just pause and observe just how ridiculous this video is. It’s so gratuitously, obnoxiously “hip,” so ridiculous that it almost must be intentional. The pouting. The hair poof. The obvious lip job. The weird fantasy-book-cover shot at the beginning. The vintage videotape clips of typical boisterous American youth and nostalgic scenes of summer bliss, accompanied by scenes of the grainy cultural underbelly. Blechh.)

On a lighter note, I was highly amused and strangely enamored by Clams Casino’s remix of “Born to Die.” Listen to it and, if you’re familiar with Clams Casino’s previous work and Lana Del Rey’s original, you’ll know what I mean. The beat is … a slow bass drum counting out the beats — think undanceable club music. It’s extremely loopy in a few senses, and its contorted clipped vocal loops at certain points remind me a bit of “Sleep Dealer” from Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest album, with more Clams Casino stretched-out ambient sounds and lo-fi recording buzz. The song ends with an inspired mix of cymbal crashes and weird weird weird looped horn sounds that sound at first like distant pitched car horns. Overall there’s an incongruous and deeply enjoyable amount of dissonance here; dissonance not only using unusual intervals for pop-themed music but employing subtly out-of-tune instrumentals that provoke the vaguely nauseous feeling in the back of the throat which typically accompanies the sound of a slightly off guitar. The song mostly eschews pop sensibilities and the climax is filled with deliberate ugliness and no real rhythmic release or satisfaction. But pop is not entirely absent — LDR’s vocals thread through the song, after all — and this is precisely what makes the remix so weird. Pop vocals and detuned horns? Really, it’s too good.

On an unrelated note, apparently Nick Zammuto of The Books (which was very nearly my favorite band working today, definitely the most consistently creative and sort of mad, textured, humorous and engaging, before they ceased to exist) is releasing an album soon with his new project, Zammuto, which is exciting, and “F U C-3PO,” the first song made available from the album, is really wonderful stuff, so I’ll leave you with that.

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