Lana Del Rey - West Coast

Remember when Lana Del Rey set the internet ablaze with Video Games? Well it certainly felt like that this morning. Fearne Cotton of BBC Radio 1 fired the starting pistol with the first play of West Coast and then there was a sprint by pretty much every income generating website and buzz blog to get the track up as soon as possible. We’re taking it a little more leisurely, but just in case you’ve been asleep or at work, here it is now. 

West Coast sounds rather like two half songs put together to make a whole – watch out for the jarring tempo change in between the two. Thankfully the whole is a good whole rather than a bad whole. Not good as in ‘big radio banger’ good, but good as in a song with a sun-bleached seventies vibe that should keep the hardcore fanbase reasonably happy. 

The first segment has a hint of sultry drive time AOR to it - it’s the part where you can hear why / how Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys is involved; Lana almost becomes a rock chick. The second part sounds rather like a woozy All Saints (hints of Pure Shores) who have put on their cowboy hats and grabbed some twangy wild-west guitars.

There’s no full video yet, so for now it’s a case of this audio one with Lana spinning around a bit. 

Of course the most important thing with West Coast will be how it sits in the context of an album. We’re keeping our fingers crossed in that regard. That album, Ultraviolence, follows in May.

Lana Del Rey - West Coast