“I’m ready to leave L.A., and I want you to come,” Lana Del Rey sings on her latest album Chemtrails Over the Country Club. “Eighty miles north or south will do.” It’s an escapist fantasy the pop singer has entertained before: stealing away from the City of Angels in a pickup truck that no one recognizes. But thankfully – for us, at least – she never acts on her wishes. On Chemtrails, her most subdued and introspective album thus far, she soundtracks the death of the American dream right from the heart of Hollywood, just as she did on her previous effort, 2019’s electrifying Norman Fucking Rockwell! And while it may not have as many grandiose showpieces as its older sibling – no nine-minute “Venice Bitch” to be found here – Chemtrails is every bit as sharp and prescient of a cultural artifact from pop’s premier Cassandra. After all, when that fireball hurtles past Hawaii towards the West Coast, as Lana foresaw on NFR’s “The Greatest,” who’s going to be there to sing torch ballads over the silent, ashen remains of Los Angeles? Lana Del Rey, of course. Where else would she be?

Though Del Rey’s overall project has remained remarkably consistent throughout her career, her growing disillusionment with fame, and with this country’s prevailing iconography of wealth and success, has loomed large as the national mood has grown more dire. Sure, there was always danger lurking behind the Kennedy smiles and gray mansion luncheons featured on Born to Die and her other early works; it’s a trait that this album’s laughably conspiratorial title still carries. But back then, Lana took the Shangri-Las approach, recalling motorcycle crashes and illicit affairs on the beach with a winking, cooing innocence. Even her saddest songs got a dance remix. Not so much anymore. Her observations are somber now, her melancholy placed against a more substantial backdrop. Kids dance the Louisiana two-step in a forgotten bar; a prolonged breakup meets its bitter end; people get high and make out in a parking lot while “the whole world is crazy.” It’s an incredibly bleak yet weirdly comforting sentiment all at once – the notion that one’s personal dramas, the ups and downs of “normal” life, will continue to go on even as the rest of the world goes to shit."

    - Rolling Stone