Lana Del Rey - Carmen (Video)

As we predicted back in November last year, now that Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Rey’s album has been released the hype / buzz / internet craziness has begun to calm down. Most noticeably the negative internet lynch-mob who lamely dissected every aspect of her physical appearance has moved on. With the LP having had a chance to settle for a while, we’re very confident in saying that come December Born to Die will be cropping up on our best of 2012 list, even though the critics reaction was mixed. However, take a closer look at the journalists views on Metacritic and you’ll see a marked geographic contrast; all of the high scoring reviews of the record were from UK journalists, whereas the vast majority of the low scoring ones were from the U.S.

We’d hazard a guess that this is because, despite sharing the same language and much of the same music, the U.S. still has a very different take on pop music than the UK. Rolling Stone described the album as “dull and dreary,” and Pitchfork described it as “a collection of torch songs with no fire.” Both sentences make us want run up to the journalist in question and shout “YOU DON’T GET IT DO YOU?” They don’t understand that not every record has to be backed with overpowering passion, the fitness equivalent of ‘going for the burn’. Some of the best modern pop music is about the stuff that subtly smoulders without ever igniting. Take The XX’s debut album as another example.

Freshly uploaded to the web this weekend comes a new video for Carmen, a song from Born To Die. The video has the same home-produced pieced-together format that the likes of Video Games and Kinda Outta Luck possessed and reminds those of us who appreciate Lana Del Rey of what engaged us both musically and visually about her art in the first place.

Lana Del Rey - Carmen (Video)