Lana Del Rey’s bad poetry makes for bad pop art

by Josiah Hughes

December 6, 2013

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Each Friday on Garbage Day, we rummage through pop culture’s trash cans and pick the week’s grossest item to keep forever. This week, we look at Lana Del Rey’s short film, Tropico.

As the PR industry allegedly slows down for the holidays and stops churning out stomach-turning trash for Christmas, I was struggling to find something to cover for Garbage Day. It got so bad, in fact, that I nearly got sucked into the vortex of music writer Twitter, where all the overconfident nerds have been fighting about something a grumpy old man said about present-day music journalism this week. But if you don’t already know, you don’t need to know about that tearful circle jerk where everyone’s wrong about everything. In fact, you deserve not to know.

In a moment of desperation, I turned to a source where I’ve dared not tread in all of my time working on Garbage Day — the horrifying pages of Alternative Press.

What was once a venerable publication has now — scratch that. I can’t possibly bring myself to contextualize AP, because even if it ever was good (was it? I don’t actually know), it’s now a place where present-day Kinsella projects struggle for attention alongside swoophaired something-core goobers and froufrou fauxlk singers, a bunch of Etsy Christians who’ve traded in their deep Vs and keytars for suspenders and questionable taste in bourbon and banjos.

There’s a lot of that bullshit currently going down on AP (which makes it even more painful to discover something that sounds kinda good), and while I didn’t find the ultimate Garbage Day winner in their ranks, I did find some wonderfully uncomfortable garbage.

Something about watching absolutely atrocious music videos every week just makes me feel alive, so you know I was drawn to a band called In This Moment. That’s some carpe diem crap if I’ve ever heard it. In This Moment released Blood, the follow-up to their hilariously titled albums Beautiful Tragedy, The Dream, and A Star-Crossed Wasteland, last year, but it’s taken them a long time to give their song “Whore” the video it deserves.

If I’m being honest with myself, “Whore” is too much, man. From fake-vintage footage of a goth goof poking around a vintage burlesque nightclub and kicking it with some masked damsels Eyes Wide Shut style to the melodramatic, grotesquely throaty vocals of frontwoman Maria Brink, who seems to take P!nk’s “rocker chick” persona a step further.

The song’s a sassy, bouncy cabaret rock song, not unlike the music of Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson forced into a blender filled with actual dogshit. Aside from the overtop burlesque garbage, we’re also treated to shots of a smoke-filled hallway, where the band’s dreadlocked guitarist powers through his power chords. There are things that are even too bad for me to enjoy, and this is one of them.

The Perservering Promise is the sort of band name that a writer on a Disney Channel show who’s never been to a concert would come up with. Or maybe it’s the sort of fictional moniker that’d be bandied around in a second-rate knock-off of Nick and Norah’s Inifinite Playlist. “Those stupid writers,” you’d chuckle. “They don’t know anything about music today.”

Except you’re wrong. The Persevering Promise, a terrible alliteration that reeks of a C+ Grade 9 English class poem, is a real band, and they’ve just released their new album with the equally cringe-inducing title An Illusion in Shambles. Bunch of wordsmiths over here.

Names aside, I knew they’d be worth checking out because of their incredible press photos. The second one, in particular, is literally perfect — from the dude on the left’s luscious locks and shitty goatee to the guy on the far right’s incredible swoop and middle dude’s Le Chateau vest, these dudes have got it going on in the cool look department. I can immediately imagine going over to their house, where it’s poker night every night, and watching one of them butcher David Blaine tricks while the other demonstrates just how many 8gb MKVs he can steal in an hour via newsgroups (fuck torrents amirite).

So just how well does the promise of this band persevere? Let’s check out the video for their new single “Colors.”

The band seems to be set up in some sort of warehouse-y dungeon thing (they must love that shit, considering they also ‘shopped themselves in a warehouse for their press photo — for the Persevering Promise, life is a Goldeneye 64 level). After a brief intro (including a dude cocking a handgun because NARRATIVE), the band break into a thudding metalcore chug and some aggro vocals. Just what I was expecting.

Equally expected are the “clean” vocals, though they hit an even sweeter spot when they come in loud and oh-so-clear at the 20-second mark. The ginger guy, who happens to be the bassist, sings “until you taaaake off these chains” while patting his chest emotionally, like a Backstreet Boy. Then he calmly bellows, “I can’t decipher what you say, with all these riddles in each phrase.” The Persevering Promise, you poetic sons of bitches.

There’s something about sweet revenge later, and then they bust into a hotel room and murder an adulterous couple while doing some sweet crabcore dancing during the breakdown, then they light up a smoke. Just another day at the office, boys. It’s all pretty goofy, but not bad enough to be crowned the worst of the week. I’ll be sure to hit them up if I’m having trouble with my download speeds.

In fact, the truest trash of the week was right in front of my nose all along with Tropico, Lana Del Rey’s absurd clusterfuck of a short film. Produced by Rick Rubin and directed by Anthony Madler (who’s done vids for everyone from the Black Eyed Peas to Rihanna, the latter of whom he’s way shorter than, btw), it’s easily the worst thing in the world this week.

Why? Well, no shade if you like Lana Del Rey, but her music is transcendently terrible in an admittedly occasionally likeable way, and she sings some of her lesser material here with “Body Electric,” “Bel Air” and “Gods and Monsters.” Worse, however, is the fact that the girl who boasts that her “pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola” thinks she’s a poet with something to say.

Tropico is described as “an epic tale based on the biblical story of sin and redemption.” In this version, Del Rey plays a confused version of Eve alongside an albino man who’s apparently Adam. But they don’t pray to God, they pray to someone named John, who we quickly learn is John Wayne.

In fact, all of this version’s garden of Eden is littered with second-rate Vegas impersonators of celebrities like John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Jesus (most of whom are namechecked in “Body Electric” as they appear onscreen). The grainy filters and blown-out film are the Tumblr generation’s way of applying meaning to meaninglessness, and the film occasionally has the essence of something artful. Ultimately, though, it’s cheap pop art — less Warholian and more a shitty, rhinestone covered Marilyn Monroe purse from a sketchy street vendor.

The whole thing lacks a narrative and is more three videos stitched together, evolving to include shots of strippers, cholos, and shitty canned food, undoubtedly some thinly veiled commentary about the “idea of America.” Factor in some iffy acting and some unbearably bad dialogue (at one point, Del Rey seriously narrates the following monologue: “The woman, the tits, nipples, breast milk, tears, laughter, weeping”) and this thing’s a wonderful, barely watchable (but still watchable), utterly pretentious bit of tripe. And that’s what Garbage Day is all about.

Tags: Music, News, garbage day, In this Moment, Lana Del Rey

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