Thursday, March 22, 2012

Born To Die Album Review


Born To Die Album Review

After months of anticipation, internet sensation Lana Del Rey's album has finally dropped. The Indie Pop princess' album is composed of songs whose themes focus on love, death, money and fame.

The album's genre varies widely, from Indie pop, Alternative pop and some songs contains influence from hip hop. With the unique sounding songs of the album, Lana sets herself apart from today's most popular pop girls (i.e. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Britney Spears). Fueled with a dark pop type of musical composition and arrangement with a sadness and depressing tone to it, the album stands out even more in a musical era where dance pop and electro-pop music dominates the chart.

Album Packaging Review
To begin the album review, let me start by commenting on the album's packaging. The album's packaging is moulded after an old LP Vinyl. It comes in a double gate fold type of packaging. The album's booklet is inserted on one side and the other side contains a small card sleeve to store the CD. So thank you Lana for putting effort in the album's packaging. My only disappointment is that the album's booklet lacks pictures of Lana. 

The album's front cover

The only picture inside of the album

The album with the booklet and the cd

The back cover of the album with the track list


Track List:
  1. Born To Die
  2. Off to the Races
  3. Blue Jeans
  4. Video Games
  5. Diet Mountain Dew
  6. National Anthem
  7. Dark Paradise
  8. Radio
  9. Carmen
  10. Million Dollar Man
  11. Summertime Sadness
  12. This is What Makes Us Girls
  13. Without You (Deluxe Edition Bonus Track)
  14. Lolita (Deluxe Edition Bonus Track)
  15. Lucky Ones (Deluxe Edition Bonus Track)
Track by Track Look Through/Review
The Singles:

Born To Die
The title track, the song gives the listeners vibes from classic movies like "Gone with the Wind". The lyrical content of the song speaks about finding love but knowing that the love won't last. Hence, the title "Born To Die"

Released as the album's second single, the song was a moderate hit across Europe but failed to chart in the US. 



Blue Jeans
This song serves as the third and current single from the album. Lyrically, the song is about Lana's break up with a former lover and that Lana is still not over him. The song's title is derived from Lana's description of her former lover's clothes.

The song has that sort of Quentin Tarantino vibe and upon hearing it, I felt like it was a long lost record from the Kill Bill movie.


Video Games
Lana's debut single, this charming indie pop song has influences from baroque pop. In the song, you'll hear a sort of sadness in Lana's voice. Though not the strongest song for a single in the entire album, it was a top ten hit in France, Netherlands and Poland while the song also went number one in Germany.


The other songs:
In Off to the Races you can hear the versatility in Lana's voice, she can go from a low tempo type of voice in the opening verse of the song to a high pitched and up tempo type of voice once the song hits the chorus. Diet Mountain Dew has traces of Hip Hop and Alternative influence in the song and speaks of eloping with a lover. National Anthem and Radio are perhaps the most radio friendly type of songs you can find in the whole album, with catchy choruses and hooks along with a 1920's type of feel in the music both songs could be candidates for a 4th and 5th single. Dark Paradise has the dark pop sound to the song and speaks to clutching on to someone you lost. It is perhaps one of the album's most emotional songs. Carmen is about girls and fame, and how young girls would do almost anything to become famous and be like "Carmen". In an interview, Lana says she is fascinated by how much influence celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton can have over young girls. Though I commend Lana for trying to create an eye opener song, the song comes out as flat and boring. Million Dollar Man has influences from the classic song "Unchained Melody" and more or less is just an album filler with not much to offer. Summertime Sadness is a song that speaks of finding love in the summer but could only last for so long. The song has potential to be a single but given its acapella type of intro, it can easily make the song boring and can turn radio listeners off. This is what makes us girls is the final track on the album, I would deem this as one of the weakest tracks on the whole album. You can barely make out what Lana is singing in the entire song and it lacks the catchy and attention grabbing choruses and hooks.

Overall, I would rate the album a 3.5 out of 5. One thing that I would commend Lana on is for her courage to try and put out an album that has a new sound and avoids the dance music that is rampant on today's charts.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Road Trip!!!

            Okay so summer is fast approaching and me and my friends decided to do a little road trip today. We figured that we might as well go to the provinces and look for some native chickens for our practicum. 

The Destination
         Our destination was to go to Dumanjug. We heard that there were tons of Native Chickens there and we were running short on native chickens for our practicum so we decided to look for suppliers there. We passed by Talisay, Tabunok, San Fernando, Barili, CarCar, Naga etc.

The Ride
             With three hours of travel time, we decided to entertain ourselves. First we had some minor chit chat before observing the sceneries (all I saw was Green!). Yeah then we decided to play some music. My epic fail moment then came when the portable speaker i brought had low batteries (Yeah real smart) lol.

On the car going to Dumanjug.

Scenery that I took while inside the car =)

Arrival
             We got to Dumanjug by 11AM and got to work immediately. We looked around their market to see if someone was selling Native Chickens. Lucky for us, we immediately found a couple of people selling and were nice enough to accommodate us.

            After looking for chickens, we decided to shop around the local market. They had fruits and vegetables over there and to no one's surprise, they were really cheap! I was able to get a kilo of eggplants for only Php25.00 (around Php5.00 per eggplant). I guess I'll be serving Tortang Talong tonight lol. I was also able to buy some caimito fruit. Which is one of my favorite fruits. Stoked! Though I wasn't able to get any sineguelas =(

Produce that we bought


            Disappointed by the lack of sceneries, we decided to take photos from random places.





            On the way back, we decided to stop by Car Car and take our lunch there. We ate their famous Lechon and it tastes nothing like the ones sold in the city. It was really good, the skin was really crispy and the meat was so tender and moist and juicy. Plus it was really cheap!

            We also did some shopping in CarCar's local market. I was able to buy their well-known delicacies like the Chicharon, Ampao, Buchayo (coconut chips) and some Yema. Again, it was really inexpensive. 


CarCar's delicacies on display

            So that concludes our road trip for the day. Overall it was a fun and tiring experience but I'm looking forward to doing it again with my friends. =)


Sunday, March 18, 2012

Magnum Craze

          So last week, Selecta launched it's new ice cream bar "Magnum". After being the trending topic on twitter for days, I decided to try it.

          Today I drove around town looking for it. When I finally found them at J Centre Mall, I was about to get shit loads of them only to be stopped by the price! The ice cream costs Php50.00 which is twice the cost of a normal ice cream bar. Nevertheless, I bought 4 bars. 2 classics and 2 almonds.


          So after dinner I ate one and I must say that it's one hell of an ice cream bar! The outer chocolate shell is made with real Belgian chocolate and I must say you can really differentiate it from the regular pinipig ice creams! The vanilla ice cream inside the chocolate shell was so so, it tasted like any other vanilla ice cream i could buy from the supermarket.

         I must say that it was well worth my Php50.00 for an ice cream bar. I'm definitely buying this again in the near future (possibly tomorrow lol). 

         Lastly, to those people who say that it tastes just like any other pinipig ice cream out there, B*tch u crazy and delusional! lol Then again I'm the one writing a review on an ice cream bar so yeah I might be the crazy one lol.