Lana Del Rey in Des Moines, Iowa: A Review
by Madalyn Whitaker
Design by Lindey Carlson
by Lindey Carlson
8:45pm, almost an hour past when Lana Del Rey was scheduled to perform at the small ballroom in Des Moines. Her audience patiently waits, not caring about her tardiness. Then, her band comes out on stage and settles into their respective spots, they start out the orchestral swell and the all-too-familiar piano melody of “Norman fucking Rockwell.” Once Lana Del Rey appears from backstage, the crowd erupts. She drifts out onto the stage in a white gown, cinched at the waist by a tan belt. Her brown hair— straight as a pin— is tied halfway up in a braid. She looks as if she belongs on the stage at Woodstock rather than a neon-lit ballroom in the middle of Iowa. The first line that comes out of her mouth swirls around the audience and evokes an eruption of emotional karaoke along with her: “Goddamn manchild, / you fucked me so good I almost said ‘I love you.’” From those first notes on, Del Rey takes the audience with her on an ethereal journey through the highlights of her entire discography.
The show is a whirlwind of ballads that flowed one right after the other. Del Rey typically chooses center stage to whisk the crowd away, but other times she perches herself in the vine-wrapped swing to the left, or sprawl herself across the grand piano on the right. Her two female back-up dancers spend the evening on stage with Del Ray. Their fluid movements swirl across the stage, creating a performance of their own that blends in with Del Rey’s vocals. Sometimes she joins the two dancers, Del Rey in the middle, one girl on each side of her, creating an ethereal female trio.
Del Rey covers her seven-year span of music in just 90 minutes, with each song on the setlist reflecting a different iconic Lana era. Del Rey covers a Joni Mitchell song, “For Free,” while seated on the top of the grand piano. Del Rey revives the 70s song from Mitchell’s album “Ladies of the Canyon” which happens to be the first lyrics of Del Rey’s song “Bartender” which she sang before the cover of “For Free.” After this song, Del Rey jumps right off of the piano and into the classic Lana “Born to Die.”
Each song blends flawlessly into one another. People in the audience raise their phones up to record their favorite songs and slide them back down to their sides to get lost in the rest of the concert. The crowd pushes from the back as Del Rey draws closer to the edge of the stage. The smell of weed and mint Juul pods mix in the air, almost a 70s rock concert meeting the modern age, mirroring how Del Rey mixes her 70s rock-inspired “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” album with her modern pop/R&B albums of the past.
The concert flies by with little words from Del Rey besides the ones being sung through her microphone. Pictures of a California summer flash behind the stage on a projected screen, flipping from road trips through the desert, to days on the beach, and back to live footage of Del Rey moseying around stage. Her lackadaisical and breezy stage presence so reminiscent of main vocalist of Led Zeppelin's, Robert Plant, I half-expect a dove to perch itself on her hand at some point throughout the show the same way one did to Plant at a Zeppelin concert in 1973.
Her last song starts softly, while the crowd screaming as the first chords ring out. “Fear fun, fear love/fresh out of fucks, forever.” Here, Del Rey effortlessly slides through “Venice Bitch.” Once the guitar solo at the end of the song arrives, Del Rey walks down to greet the crowd as her guitarist takes center stage. She smiles for photos, offers hugs across the guard rail, accepts flowers, then walks back up to the stage. The psychedelic guitar wraps itself around the audience, Del Rey’s voice drifting through the bodies in the crowd. She finishes the last chorus. On her last note, she makes her way off stage with her two dancers in tow. The band finishes their last few chords and the lights come up, revealing the mesmerized faces in the crowd.