Lush, cinematic strings open title track “Honeymoon” with a somber sigh. Lana Del Rey’s silken voice coos the opening lyrics “We both know that it’s not fashionable to love me,” and so it goes. This is definitely a Lana Del Rey album; chocked full of dead glamour, hollow dreams, and tempting fantasies. All undoubtedly out of reach, of course.

Lana Del Rey’s new album “Honeymoon,” released Sept.18, is a dark, hypnotic work; Del Rey doesn’t even bother to push the heavy velvet curtains aside for a single song. The sleepy 14 track album explores all the typical themes we’ve seen from Lana before- repressed emotions, craving impossibilities, deep yearnings for love, and the ever present event of getting high.

She hazily mourns her experience with a seemingly addictive, all-encompassing need for love. Again, nothing we haven’t seen from her before. She does allow some bittersweet hopes to drip into a few tracks, only to be crumbled down with more languid melancholy.

Her lyrics jump between dreamlike fantasies and brutally honest realities. Del Rey wails to a lover in ghostly “Religion” about how “It was never about the party or the clubs, for you there’s only love. Cause you’re my religion, you’re how I’m living.” She even goes so far in “Salvatore” as to weave in creamy Italian phrases, just to add to the already haunting tone. Her layered, mesmeric vocals definitely take center stage throughout the album and keep things interesting as one gloomy track leads into another.  

“High By The Beach” and “The Blackest Day” are by far the most upbeat songs of the whole album; and even that is pushing it. They’re two of the few tracks with a relatively audible drum beat, and would easily fit in with her previous “Born To Die” album.

When listening to every song on this album, one can’t help but picture Del Rey riding shotgun along the Californian coast, her dark curls splashing against her cheek in slow motion, as she gazes into the lazy sky with a cigarette raised to her plush, pouting lips. It’s just become her signature, perhaps.

Even though this album is oozing with lethargy and misery, Del Rey has seemed to not only stay true to herself, but further explore and come to terms with her hopes, desires, and experiences. There is definitely a crucial bite of honesty to every song, which only adds some much needed edge and intrigue.