Review: Lana Del Rey’s ‘Ocean Blvd’ is an intimate epic

“Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” by Lana Del Rey Lana Del Rey is a complicated, enigmatic pop star — since the height of her breakout album, “Born to Die,” the singer has been labeled one of the best songwriters of her generation. She also features Grammy award-winning uber talent Jon Batiste on “Candy Necklace” and “Jon Batiste Interlude,” producer-musician and Del Rey’s most frequent collaborator, Jack Antonoff, as his moniker Bleachers, and Father John Misty. Del Rey sings melancholically about her impermanence in the album’s title track, “Don’t forget me/Like the tunnel under Ocean Boulevard.” On another album single, “A&W,” co-written and produced by Antonoff, the singer gorgeously speaks to the experience of a liberated woman who wears a metaphorical scarlet letter on her chest. The wandering hour-long album closes with “Taco Truck x VB” a dark ballad that transitions to a trap-ified sample of “Venice B,” one of Del Rey’s songs from her hit album “Norman F Rockwell.” Sampling her own work shows Del Rey doesn’t have anything to prove in “.Ocean Blvd,” she’s never sounded more succinct and brazenly herself.