Chemtrails Over the Country Club is an exciting addition to Lana Del Rey’s oeuvre in music. The album, which dropped in March 2021, touches on nostalgia, freedom, loneliness, and femininity with complications. On melancholy, her cinematic style often pitches the listener into a world of silence where one witnesses idyllic suburban life portrayed with darker undertones.
The title of the album says it all in regards to this juxtaposition. “Chemtrails” refers to the conspiracy theory that aeroplane trails contain chemical agents being dropped into the atmosphere for nefarious purposes. “Country Club” refers to exclusivity and peacefulness with a privileged lifestyle. Together, the title sets up a theme of something being hidden beneath a glossy surface. In this album, Del Rey plumbs what seems to be both the promise and void of the American dream from the vantage of the woman who cannot have all things at once—fame, lost identity, and a place in this world.
Musically, Chemtrails Over the Country Club is nakedly aesthetic, blending dreamy, atmospheric sounds with folk; ripeness feels much more laid bare than it had been in Del Rey’s earlier, baroque pop-heavy efforts, be it Born to Die or Ultraviolence. Working with long-time producer Jack Antonoff, Del Rey makes maximal use of acoustic guitars and piano, with production that’s sparsely imagined in its amplification of her otherworldly voice. That shift in sound seems to also reflect the more personal, reflective quality of this album.
The perfect model for this type of song is the title track, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.” From fragile piano takeoff into a haunting meditation on escape, identity, and the desire to make things simple in chaos, this song brings out things like “I’m on the run with you, my sweet love,” which at the same time speak of seeking freedom but with the bitterness of not being able to outrun life’s inevitable tests.
Lyrical confessionals abound: in “White Dress,” she expresses innocence and uncertainty typical of someone’s early twenties, and in “Wild at Heart,” she lists love and rebellion and themes that have long made her persona. But the album also promises greater matters: social unrest is subtly woven into the imagery of a broken, beautiful world.
In Chemtrails Over the Country Club, Del Rey masters the marriage of nostalgia with modern anxieties—an album that sounds so timeless and yet sinks its roots deep into the uncertainty of the present. It’s a subtle pursuit in identity, expectations of society, and the yearning for authenticity in a world of artifice.
