On singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey’s ninth studio album, Did You Know that There’s a Tunnel under Ocean Boulevard, she explores her personal life more than ever before and dives back into her hip-hop roots while creating one of her most sonically-confused albums.

The new album, to be released this Friday, is not a shocker in the grand scheme of her discography, though coming after her two 2021 LPs (Chemtrails over the Country Club and Blue Banisters) folk oriented piano ballads, Ocean Boulevard is quite the shift—a well needed one for that matter.

Now, Lana Del Rey album openers have a formula, either starting with strings, piano, or guitar. This album opener, “The Grants,” opens with gospel singers thus pointing to the unconventional direction this album takes.

On Ocean Boulevard, Del Rey gets wordy. In addition to the title track, the album features a song titled “Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of My Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing.”

Huh . . . ?

And on another track, “Fingertips,” Del Rey sings, “As I look back, tracing fingertips over plastic bags, thinking I wish I could extrapolate some small intention, or maybe just get your attention for a minute or two,” her almost nonstop stream of consciousness. This goes for almost 6 minutes straight with only a hint of a melody. And while these ballads are objectively good, they also reveal so much more about her than albums before.

Lana Del Rey, however, is not making music for the masses anymore—to some degree this album is unrelatable, almost like her personal journal.

To her superfans, this is no problem, but to those who don’t know that the “Chucky” referenced throughout the album is her sister, Ocean Boulevard might be confusing.

What else is confusing is the constant genre switching throughout the album.

For example, on the single “A&W,” Del Rey sings falsetto over a quick acoustic guitar about her life before it turns into a psychedelic trap song—and before you realize it, the track hits 7:13 minutes.

This stylistic shuffle happens multiple times throughout the album. On “Peppers,” featuring Canadian rapper Tommy Genesis, quick guitar notes play before a hip hop beat aggressively enters the song with Genesis rapping overtop, then of course Lana sings of kissing her covid infected boyfriend. It’s probably Del Rey’s fastest and most “pop” song while also being one of her most chaotic and experimental songs, which oddly appears on an album full of slow burner ballads.

And then there's the Judah Smith Interlude: four minutes of a pastor yelling out his sermon while Lana giggles in the background and soft piano plays.

Despite the dramatic shifts in the album, Del Rey and producer Jack Antonoff make the songs flow seamlessly one to another.

My personal favorite off the album, “Let the Light in,” featuring Father John Misty, is one of the more classic sounding tracks off Ocean Boulevard. Sounding like it could be taken right out of Fleetwood Mac's discography, Del Rey and Misty sing, “Let the light in, at your back door yelling cus I wanna come in,” harmonizing together. It’s a highlight on an album full of highlights.

On the album’s final track, “Taco Truck x VB,” Del Rey samples herself in another unusual move. The first half of the track is brand new, then the beat drops and Lana samples some sort of screenplay which merges into her 2019 song, “Venice B*tch.” Unlike the original song, a classic rock song, Del Rey has now adapted the song with trap beats to end her album.

It’s a clear indicator of an artist's establishment in the industry when she can sample her own song.

Is Ocean Boulevard a confusing listen? Yes. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. One thing that stays true throughout the album is her authenticity and her poetry. Ocean Boulevard is like a collage board of her life and career paths . . . and a good one at that.