Honeymoon (Colv)

Call Honeymoon the third installment in a trilogy if you will but there's no indication Lana Del Rey will put her doomed diva persona to rest after this album. Over the course of three albums, Lana Del Rey hasn't so much expanded her delicately sculpted persona as she has refined it, removing anything extraneous to her exquisite ennui. Honeymoon doesn't drift or float, it marks time, sometimes swelling with a suggestion of impending melodrama but often deflating to just an innervated pulse. Apart from the syncopated chorus on "High on the Beach," any lingering element of the hip-hop affectations of Born to Die have been banished and so have the shade and light Dan Auerbach brought to Ultraviolence, a record that feels cinematic in comparison to Honeymoon. What's left behind is the essence of Lana Del Rey: iconic images of days of Los Angeles passed, all plasticized and stylized, functioning as lighthouses in stoned, sad daydreams. Mood reigns over all on Honeymoon -- melodies and tempos certainly aren't prioritized over feel; all the originals are purposefully languid, which is partially why the Nancy Sinatra sample on "Terrence Loves You" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a cover allegedly in the vein of Nina Simone's original but bearing an organ out of the Animals, stick -- but underneath the dragging beats and austere arrangements, there's something approaching triumph. Where Lana Del Rey seemed weighted down by existential sorrow on her first two albums, Honeymoon seems comfortingly melancholic and that's the truest sign that it is the fullest execution of Lana Del Rey's grand plan yet. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine