Who knows whose idea it was to sample those groups of four ascending notes that create a sinister and suspended atmosphere. They go up without taking the final half step, they remain a semitone behind, as if there was a small mystery to be revealed. It is the sound that opens White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunterthe song Lana Del Rey released today, and is sampled from Ella Fitzgerald's 1964 version of Laurathe one with the arrangement by Nelson Riddle. The original was written in 1944 by David Raksin for the soundtrack of Otto Preminger's noir Vertigo. There was a beautiful and charming publicist there who was found murdered (Laura, not surprisingly like Palmer in Twin Peaks), here is a troubled pop star who comes home and cooks for the husband whose love set her back on the right path. In both cases the atmosphere has something dreamlike.
In fans' minds, Lana Del Rey has a very vintage and decidedly impeccable record collection. Drew Erickson probably has it too, writing the strings and co-producing the song with Jack Antonoff giving it a whimsical, orchestral feel, a little folk noir and a little Disney. The fact is that after the introduction, White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter ventures into the territories of magical classicism, so to speak. There are sounds of flute, violin, cello, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, celesta, harp. It's hard not to think of it as the transfigured version of the singer's relationship with her husband Jeremy Dufrene, the Louisiana guide who takes tourists around to spot alligators and who in the song seems to come home from hunting. Dufrene co-wrote the song with the singer's sister Chuck Grant and brother-in-law Jason Pickens.
In the pre-chorus, Del Rey sets the scene: “Everyone knows I've been having some trouble, but I'm home for the summer.” The domestic scene changes in the chorus, with music that takes on exotic accents and the voice that becomes thinner as if it were mimicking the emission of singers of the past, with the addition of the flirtatious lightness of that “whoopsie-daisy, yoo-hoo” which is almost cartoonish. White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter it's not a pop song, but it's interesting precisely because it transfigures an ordinary scene and brings it into a world of fantasy. The key expression is “positively voodoo”, the love and peace found in the new relationship and in a traditional female role as positive magic.
And to think that Lana Del Rey had announced the next album, postponed several times and now expected within three, four months, as a work tending towards country. Then, when country music became a trend, as well as an object of cultural discussion with the release of Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé, Del Rey changed her mind and announced not only a title change (from Period to The Right Person Will Stay and now Stove), but also a turn towards a less country music and closer to the Southern gothic imagery. Someone is already protesting, it's not the Lana Del Rey we expected, the latest singles were better Bluebird And Henry, Come Honothers are convinced that it is the exact opposite and it is not surprising given that White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter it's not a radio single, but a pop fantasy destined to divide. Or maybe they could have expected something similar knowing the cover of Summertime by Gershwin that Del Rey published in 2020 to raise funds for the New York and Los Angeles philharmonic orchestras that were stopped in the times of Covid.
“I know it's strange to see me cooking for my husband,” sings Lana Del Rey in the piece she published after having «finally found the magic chord I was missing». It's also strange to hear her struggling with a song that combines the trend of pop which uses the instruments and colors of classical music without naturally aiming to be such and of gothic folk, without ever becoming morbid. In the finale the notes of Laurathe sound planes overlap, it seems to hear a reference to cocaine. Maybe the happy ending is postponed and we have to listen Stove to find out more. We will gladly do it.
