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Del Rey reaches for torch, shines its light on life, love

Album cover for Lana Del Rey's "Lust for Life"
Album cover for Lana Del Rey's "Lust for Life"

A- Lana Del Rey

Lust for Life

Interscope

Lana Del Rey stays in character on her fourth and lengthy album, expanding her takes on personal obsessions inside her fishbowl with observations about living in America.

A youthful lady of perpetual sadness, Del Rey still sounds like a torch singer but this time she also reflects on the flames in the world around her.

The 16-song album opens with the magnificent “Love,” capturing the natural ecstasy of “to be young and in love.” On the title track, the Weeknd helps her spell out exactly what it’s about.

The cinematic “13 Beaches” addresses the challenges of intimacy during life in the spotlight, while the second half of the record begins with three tunes — “Coachella — Woodstock in My Mind,” “God Bless America — And the Beautiful Women in It” and “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” — which leave the fishbowl behind.

Stevie Nicks is a version of Del Rey farther up the road on “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems,” while Sean Lennon has never sounded more like his father than on “Tomorrow Never Came,” which also tips its hat to George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Elton John.

Surprisingly, Radiohead isn’t credited on closer “Get Free,” which draws very much from “Creep” while expressing Del Rey’s “modern manifesto” — “Finally, I’m crossing the threshold/From the ordinary world/To the reveal of my heart.”

There’s plenty to absorb and few missteps on Lust for Life, a long, meticulous trip with rewards at every stop.

Hot tracks: “Love,” “13 Beaches,” “Tomorrow Never Came”

B Khalid

American Teen

RCA

In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. For Khalid Robinson, a 19-year-old El Paso-born pop-hop kid, however, such woozy thinking — come summer — is ripe with dire desolation, unrequited romance, vicious head trips, messy break-ups and weed.

Ah, late teendom.

Performed before a blustery bank of silvery New Wave-y synths, gurgling sequencers, and sprightly rhythms (“8TEEN” being the most high-energy), the breathy, rough-hewn singer-songwriter tackles confessional, cutting-edge soul with a sort of mawkish, insecure sway so apt for his age. “I’m not the best at showing my emotions,” he sings on “Another Sad Love Song,” a tale of muzzled relationships in league with similar “American Teen” tunes such as the moody ballad “Cold Blooded” and the commitment-phobic “Young Dumb & Broke.” For all the soulful, doleful hanging at the corner of Heartbreak & Whine, American Teen is a glad-to-be-unhappy, mini-masterpiece of a debut about growing up and out of adolescence in the present day. Only the Undertones’ Teenage Kicks captures the blemishes and buoyancy of youth with such zeal, melody and unique vision.

Hot tracks: “Another Sad Love Song,” “Young Dumb & Broke,” “Cold Blooded”

B+ Big Thief

Capacity

Saddle Creek

Big Thief ’s Masterpiece was one of last year’s most exciting debuts, bristling with fraught emotions, dissonant electric guitars and assertive vocals. Capacity, the Brooklyn quartet’s follow-up, is even better. It’s more varied and complex, with sturdier melodies and moments of stirring beauty.

Like PJ Harvey, Adrianne Lenker explores raw-nerve territory, and the imagery often has elements of nightmarish fairy tales. Although the guitars occasionally amplify the intensity, for the most part, the arrangements favor contained tension over cathartic aggression. Lenker has noted a youthful fondness for Iron & Wine, and you can hear a similar folk-rock precision in “Mythological Beauty” and “Black Diamonds.” “Mary” is an extended piano-based ballad that Lenker sings tenderly and deliberately. It’s the most striking and captivating song on the album, but not by much.

Hot tracks: “Mythological Beauty,” “Mary”

B+ Passion Pit

Tremendous Sea of Love

Wishart Group

Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos says that he has stepped away from being a commercialized artist and his new album is part of that move. All proceeds go to psychiatric scientific research at the Broad Institute’s Stanley Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Tremendous Sea of Love

often finds Angelakos at his most immediate, unguarded pop melodies like “Hey K,” where he declares, “Love is the answer” over a soaring bed of synthesizers, and the upbeat thrill ride “I’m Perfect.”

The sweet ballad “To the Otherside” and the singer-songwriter throwback soul of “You Have the Right” could easily find a home on pop radio. However, instead of advancing his own interests, Angelakos is focusing on furthering the interests of all artists, which he hopes will help create the “Tremendous Sea of Love” that he seeks.

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Album cover for Khalid's "American Teen"

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The cover of Big Thief’s Capacity.

Hot tracks: “I’m Perfect,” “To the Otherside”

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