Lana Del Rey – Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass - 2020 Spoken Word - Black Vinyl - Sealed 180 Grm LP

B8 Bare Feet On Linoleum

"Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is enjoyable, in a vanity project sort of way. The poems are patchy though. Some show how broken and vulnerable (yet a sanitised version of vulnerability) Del Rey is. Lines like “I hear Dylan when I look at you, I can see it in invisible ink like a tattoo”, “She said my number one problem was that my field was untrusting. When asked what to do, she paused and said ‘Nothing’. Which sent me right into uncontrollable sobbing” and “You move like water sweet baby sweet waiter. Making the night smile to no one you cater. Silent wood worker from midnight till later. My lover my laughter my armour my maker” feel like they could have been lifted directly from any teenage diary or English homework assignment. The rhymes feel clunky and the feelings she is trying to get across are cluttered from trying to hard. However, the most cringeworthy line is uttered on ‘Salamander’: “I love you, but you don’t understand me, I’m a real poet! My life is my poetry, my love making is my legacy! My thoughts are about nothing, and beautiful, and for free”. However, when Del Rey manages to find her voice it works incredibly. The standout moment of the album is the prose story ‘Sport Cruiser’. Here Del Rey uses a story about flying and sailing lessons as a metaphor for her insecurity. During the flying lesson, the instructor asked for a simple maneuver. Del Rey completed it, but slower that she intended. The instructor commented “You don’t trust yourself”. “I was horrified. Feeling as though I’d somehow been found out. Like he knew me,” she recounts. “How weak I was. Of course, he was only talking about my ability as a pilot in the sky. But I knew it was meant for me to hear those words”. After the lesson, Del Rey concludes that “Pilots aren’t like poets. They don’t make metaphors between life and the sky”. Hmmmm. Later in ‘Sport Cruiser’ she decides to book a sailing lesson at the Marina Del Rey (see what she did there). “I signed up for the class as ‘Elizabeth Grant’, And nobody blinked an eye. So, why was I so sure that when I walked into the tiny shack on Valley Way, someone would say? “You’re not a captain of a ship, or a master of the sky!”."