The great Lana Del Ray ponders the potential "end of America"

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Time is weighing on Lana Del Rey on her fourth major-label studio album, “Lust for Life.” At 32, she’s thinking not only about the troubled romances that fill most of her songs, but also about a next generation: flower-crowned children she sees around her at the Coachella festival, young lovers she notices on the street. In the album’s opening song, “Love,” she looks at, “You kids with your vintage music coming through satellites,” and observes, “You’re part of the past, but now you’re the future.” That entanglement of old and new has been Ms. Del Rey’s gift and her strategy. Some pop careers unfold as a progression, an implicit narrative of an artist discovering new ideas and choosing different challenges. Ms. Del Rey’s catalog has been more like an Alexander Calder
mobile: a fixed set of elements in a shifting balance, realigned with each viewing. “Lust for Life” is her most expansive album; it has 16 songs, stretching nearly 72 minutes. It also, in rare moments, hints at a wink behind Ms. Del Rey’s somber lullabies. Ms. Del Rey pivots away from personal matters for a brief, enigmatic stretch midway through the album. “God Bless America — and All The Beautiful Women in It” seesaws between doubtful and idealistic; in the chorus, the line “God bless America” is followed by two loud gunshots. She sings “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” in a vintage music-hall warble, trying to find hope but wondering: “Is it the end of an era?/Is it the end of America?”

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