Consumer Guide Album

Lana Del Rey: Honeymoon [Polydor/Interscope, 2015]
Presumably anybody who thinks her shtick has stagnated is too embarrassed to pay attention, because without doubt it's evolved. Subtly, OK, but the slowing tempos at least are hard to miss, and they go with the subtle part: the changing ways she's portrayed both herself and the objects of her affection over the past four years. Initially she enacted rockish boy-toy masochism--a pretty girl who got wet for an entire casting call of rough trade sugar daddies. But the third album of her tuneful, bonus-studded catalogue stars the torchy femme fatale who always lurked underneath, and by now half the objects of her exploitation are pretty clearly jerks. Born-to-lie Mr. Born to Lose is a game to her--she never bought into his bullshit. "Salvatore," who could be based on her real-life Italian boyfriend for all I know, is auto-crooned so close to the edge of parody I wish she'd figured out how to sneak in the moon hitting her eye like a big pizza pie. But the biggest breakthrough is Lana herself on "God Knows I Tried," where the artist born Lizzy Grant cops to her real-life fame and interrupts the come-ons to swear, "I feel free when I see no one." You never know--this dame might write a love song we can believe in someday. "Freak" and "Blackest Day" come fairly close. A-