During the "Born To Die days," Lana Del Rey made model Bradley Soileau her video muse. As her sophomore full-length "Ultraviolence" finally makes its way out into the world Tuesday (June 17), a new man hits the scene - an older paramour featured in the video for "Shades Of Cool," the second single from Del Rey's sophomore full-length, which is about many things, but her music videos for the album have tended to be about something very specific: entering hopeless relationships with older gentlemen who happen to have slicked-back hair.
Del Rey wrote with the San Francisco-born songwriter Rick Nowels for this slow sweeping and slightly gloomy ballad marked by reverberated guitars, slight atmospherics that contrasts the more pop-savvy swaggering "West Coast," and the song also consists of a chiming guitar, slow-burn bass line, and swelling orchestra which surround Del Rey's vocals that alternate between a hushed whisper and ephemeral wailing. "Shades Of Cool" is the most Bond-sounding single off Del Rey's "Ultraviolence," but the video is more fairy tale than action movie.
It's steeped in the mirage-like American iconography that has colored Del Rey's music in since "Video Games," depicting a romantic fling with an older man. There are also some stylized images involving birds that could be described as "adult Disney." The man in question is Hollywood tattoo artist Mark Mahoney, and he was also featured in the video for "West Coast." In a sense, the videos for both songs kind of bleed into each other, telling the tale of love most certainly primed to go bad. If "West Coast" was all about Del Rey burning down L.A., "Shades Of Cool" is all about dousing it with water.
Directed by Jake Nava and blurring fantasy and reality, the clip opens with a close-up of Mahoney's face, bathed in blue, he drives off into the California sunset as Del Rey writhes in her heartbreak, and eventually very '70s-styled abode. Initially, our "Ultraviolence" heroine appears as a flickering hologram, swaying until she finally finds purchase in the physical world, frolicking with Mahoney through a landscape filled with pools, retro houses and strawberries, but the lines between fantasy and reality mesh further as the nearly 6-minute track haunts ever onward. It's very Gatsby-core.
It's steeped in the mirage-like American iconography that has colored Del Rey's music in since "Video Games," depicting a romantic fling with an older man. There are also some stylized images involving birds that could be described as "adult Disney." The man in question is Hollywood tattoo artist Mark Mahoney, and he was also featured in the video for "West Coast." In a sense, the videos for both songs kind of bleed into each other, telling the tale of love most certainly primed to go bad. If "West Coast" was all about Del Rey burning down L.A., "Shades Of Cool" is all about dousing it with water.
Directed by Jake Nava and blurring fantasy and reality, the clip opens with a close-up of Mahoney's face, bathed in blue, he drives off into the California sunset as Del Rey writhes in her heartbreak, and eventually very '70s-styled abode. Initially, our "Ultraviolence" heroine appears as a flickering hologram, swaying until she finally finds purchase in the physical world, frolicking with Mahoney through a landscape filled with pools, retro houses and strawberries, but the lines between fantasy and reality mesh further as the nearly 6-minute track haunts ever onward. It's very Gatsby-core.
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