Chemtrails Over the Country Club

White Dress: Lana puts her voice in a very high, thin place, and some words are almost squeezed out on the breath. After getting used to the calm she has in her low register, hearing this song, you feel she has suddenly become a little clumsy, and also very close.

I like this way of singing that isn’t entirely comfortable. The lyrics go back to the days when she was a waitress before she was famous, and the melody doesn’t arrange a pretty pose for the memory. Especially where the syllables are dense, she seems to prefer letting the lines get cramped so long as she can finish saying what she remembers from then. Those days did not automatically become an easy starting point to look back on just because she later became famous. She is still missing the feeling she had then about the future.

The title track lets the sound stretch out. The piano, the gentle beat, and the constantly overlapping voices leave a lot of room for small things like the pool, friends, and wandering around. She sings offhandedly, yet where the lines land is very precise. The zodiac signs and everyday details mentioned in passing have an intimacy that is in no hurry to be understood by strangers.

The title puts the trails in the sky next to a country club, which gives this ease a touch of doubt. But I don’t think it needs to be explained as a tight conspiracy theory. The life in the lyrics is already concrete enough, and the strangeness the title leaves hangs over it, like some days that are quite calm and still you can’t fully relax.

The vocal treatment on Tulsa Jesus Freak is more noticeable. The processed endings, layered recordings, and looping beat make her voice a little floaty, and also a little sticky. Religious forms of address, alcohol, and intimate relationships are mixed together, yet the melody is very catchy. It is an important dark patch on the album, so that the softness of the first few songs doesn’t stay at one temperature.

Let Me Love You Like a Woman is fairly regular in structure, the chorus is easy to remember, and the piano is very restrained. Listened to alone, you might not find anything startling in it, but placed here it works to steady the pace. By Wild at Heart, the accompaniment gets fuller, and Lana’s tone has more of a confidence that doesn’t want to be disciplined. She is already very familiar with how others see her, and she still wants to keep a little room to decide for herself.

Dark But Just a Game is the turn I find most interesting. Dark beats and lighter melodic sections switch back and forth, and the song talks about the price of fame while keeping an almost light expression. It doesn’t sing losing control as something grand, and it even carries a bit of cold, detached watching. The song title itself has the flavor of brushing things lightly aside, but the unease in the music doesn’t disappear because of that.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost and Yosemite slow the album down. The texture of the acoustic guitar is very clear, and the latter especially relies on the relationship between steady picking and the voice, without much decoration. I like how Yosemite imagines a long time together. Seasons change and people change too, but the song is willing to stretch time out and see whether a certain choice can keep being made. This steadiness is rare in Lana’s work.

The second half also has some places that feel a little loose. A few songs are too close in speed and sound, and on a first full listen you may not immediately remember how each one differs. But the rougher voice of Nikki Lane in Breaking Up Slowly really did wake my ears up. With the two voices trading off, the breakup gets a bit of tired reality.

Dance Till We Die keeps a relaxed stride at first, then in the middle suddenly turns into a more forceful blues rock, and the drums and piano both open up. This change makes me feel the whole album still has a lot of energy that wasn’t used up. It is just that most of the time she isn’t in a hurry to bring it out.

At the end is a cover of Joni Mitchell’s For Free, sung in turn by Zella Day, Lana, and Weyes Blood. The handover between the different timbres is very natural, and it also gently closes the album’s thoughts about fame, music, and a past life. At the beginning she remembers her not-yet-famous self, and at the end she sings about someone playing for free on the street. There is no deliberate declaration between the two songs, but they echo each other.

Chemtrails Over the Country Club is very good to listen to when you aren’t waiting for a climax. It is a bit loose, and some parts are not distinct enough, but the strained high notes of White Dress, the haze of Tulsa Jesus Freak, and the middle of Dance Till We Die suddenly stretching out all make me want to keep listening. Its best parts are often exactly where Lana hasn’t polished her voice to be so calm.