ADRIAN THRILLS: Turmoil of Lana Del Rey, the Gangster Nancy Sinatra

LANA DEL REY: Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (Polydor)

Verdict: Mesmerising but spasmodic

Lana Del Rey was once dubbed ‘the gangster Nancy Sinatra’ and dismissed for having a ‘fabricated persona’.

But these days even her fiercest critics would be hard pushed to call her a phoney. ‘I’m a princess, I’m divisive,’ she sings on her ninth studio album, taking a mocking potshot at those who still doubt her musical integrity.

Her latest effort, which runs for 77 minutes and consists (like all her records) primarily of sad, reverb-drenched torch songs, is overlong, labyrinthine and sometimes baffling.

Many of its themes, from her bad-boy lovers to the underbelly of American life, will be familiar, but its better moments pack the honest, emotional punch of a songwriter in her prime.

It accelerates a process evident on her two lockdown LPs — Chemtrails Over The Country Club and Blue Banisters — which saw the 37-year-old (born Elizabeth Grant and raised in a middle-class family in upstate New York) reveal more of herself. ‘I’m writing my own story, and no one can tell it but me,’ she said in 2021.

Lana Del Rey was once dubbed ‘the gangster Nancy Sinatra’ and dismissed for having a ‘fabricated persona’

She lowers her guard straight away on hymn-like opening track The Grants, about family memories. Co-written with ex-boyfriend Mike Hermosa, who plays piano on the album, it mentions her sister Caroline’s first-born daughter and her grandmother’s last smile: ‘I’m gonna take that too with me,’ she sighs.

That track includes stunning harmonies by Melodye Perry, Pattie Howard and Shikena Jones, three singers who feature in the 2013 documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, about overlooked backing vocalists.

The trio reappear on the title track, in which Del Rey likens the transience of pop fame to the fate of the abandoned Jergins Tunnel, a passageway to the Long Beach shoreline that was closed in 1967 after 40 years. ‘When’s it gonna be my turn?’ she sings, wondering whether she’ll one day be consigned to history in similar fashion.

Her emotional turmoil is thrown into even sharper relief on A&W, a two-part mini-opera that opens with atmospheric piano chords and ends in distorted electronics. The suspicion she might be a little too addicted to melancholy is reinforced on ballad Kintsugi, named after the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery (‘It’s just that I don’t trust myself with my heart, I have to let it break a little more … ’)

Her latest effort, which runs for 77 minutes and consists (like all her records) primarily of sad, reverb-drenched torch songs, is overlong, labyrinthine and sometimes baffling

There are two cameos from Oscar-winning film composer Jon Batiste (pictured)

Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel . . . is musically rich. Del Rey’s voice switches from a husky purr to a wispy soprano and, as befits an album with a series of sleeves that all resemble B-movie posters, the mood is cinematic.

There are two cameos from Oscar-winning film composer Jon Batiste. Another of Lana’s producers, Jack Antonoff, adds Mellotron and Moog.

But the record sags in the middle, with 14 songs and two lengthy ‘interludes’, the first of which features U.S. pastor (and friend of Justin Bieber) Judah Smith and echoed laughter.

The most memorable songs are, ironically, the most conventional: Father John Misty duet Let The Light In, and the piano pop of Paris, Texas. Long-term fans will also enjoy spotting the usual array of songs that mention other songs, with knowing shout-outs to tracks by John Denver, the Eagles and doo-wop quintet Little Anthony And The Imperials. There’s a nod to Harry Nilsson, where she names not just a song (the heart-wrenching Don’t Forget Me), but also the precise moment where Nilsson’s voice breaks.

This isn’t Lana’s best album — I can’t imagine too many of these songs featuring in her forthcoming Glastonbury set — but it is another fascinating move from a singer who balances alternative styles and mainstream appeal. That tunnel to obscurity can wait a while.

DEPECHE MODE: Memento Mori (Columbia)

Verdict: Tour de force

The loss of founder member Andy Fletcher, who died, aged 60, last May, was always going to have a profound effect on Depeche Mode. Fletch was the glue that held an otherwise volatile outfit together for more than 40 years, and his absence looms large on the Basildon band’s 15th album.

‘I’ll meet you by the river, or maybe on the other side,’ sings frontman Dave Gahan on Wagging Tongue, one of several tracks harking back to the group’s days as Kraftwerk-inspired synth-poppers who rode the 1980s New Romantic wave. ‘You’ll find it hard to swallow when you watch another angel die,’ he adds.

Memento Mori is Depeche Mode’s first album as a two-piece — Gahan plus main songwriter Martin Gore — and it places them belatedly in the classic synth-duo tradition of Soft Cell and the Pet Shop Boys. A second collaboration with producer James Ford, it’s a huge step-up from 2017’s laboured Spirit, which lacked both decent tunes and good cheer.

The Latin album title translates as ‘remember you have to die’, but there’s something revitalising about a record that addresses mortality but concludes that life is still worth living.

Memento Mori is Depeche Mode’s first album as a two-piece — Dave Gahan (Right) plus main songwriter Martin Gore (Left)

The loss of founder member Andy Fletcher, who died, aged 60, last May, was always going to have a profound effect on Depeche Mode

‘Sunday’s shining, silver linings,’ sings Gahan on Ghosts Again, an exhilarating song written by Gore and Richard Butler (of The Psychedelic Furs) that displays a lightness of touch absent on Spirit.

Gahan is in tremendous form. He plays the snake-hipped rock god with aplomb, but — as he showed when covering the popular standards Smile and Lilac Wine on Imposter, his 2021 covers album — he has a softer side, and he sings with the tenderness of a traditional crooner on ballad Soul With Me.

If that comes as a pleasant surprise, Memento Mori otherwise plays to well-established strengths, with Gore re-igniting his flair for memorable melodies: Never Let Me Go is driven by synths straight out of the 1980s; Don’t Say You Love Me is a Bond-worthy ballad.

Both albums are out today. Depeche Mode play Twickenham Stadium on June 17.

KATIE MELUA: Love & Money (BMG)

Verdict: Melua matures in style

By transforming herself from an easy-listening pop queen into a more adventurous performer, Katie Melua has seen her career progress in rather contrary fashion. Most artists do it the other way around.

The singer-songwriter, 38, who made her name with middle-of-the-road songs like The Closest Thing To Crazy, couldn’t exactly be deemed cutting-edge even now, but her music has undeniably become more intrepid since she marked turning 30 by making an LP of choral music with the Gori Women’s Choir.

The singer-songwriter, 38, who made her name with middle-of-the-road songs like The Closest Thing To Crazy, couldn’t exactly be deemed cutting-edge even now

Inspired by new romance and first-time motherhood (she gave birth to a son, Sandro, in November), new album Love & Money breaks more fresh ground.

Produced by film composer Leo Abrahams, and made while Melua was pregnant, it’s a sophisticated song-suite she describes as her ‘blue-sky record … like drinking a cool glass of water in the summertime’.

She begins, on Golden Record, by examining the task of balancing a career and family life. Initially, she looks enviously at friends who are measuring out their lives in the school years of their children, but then turns her gaze inwards, wondering whether she’s secretly afraid of living a life of domestic bliss herself. The track’s jittery electronics are a surprise.

Elsewhere, she mixes acoustic pop and jazzier styles in the manner of Joni Mitchell, though the two artists she cites as her main inspirations here are Van Morrison and French ballad singer Françoise Hardy.

She also takes detours into early 2000s chill-out on Darling Star, and classical chamber music on Pick Me Up, which features her brother Zurab on piano.

Some tracks address her new relationship, with Quiet Moves inspired by watching her boyfriend dance for the first time, and Lie In The Heat telling of an idyllic day out.

She also recounts a bizarre early romantic encounter — a seaweed-collecting trip to Margate — on First Date. ‘I’m gonna be as careful about finding him … as careful as I am about finding songs.’ She’s found a few here.

Katie Melua starts a tour on May 2 at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (ticketmaster.co.uk).