CDs of the week: Lana Del Rey, Leonard Cohen and Django Django

Lana Del Rey
Born to Die
(Polydor)
***

Jobbing New York songstress Lizzy Grant failed to set the world alight; so she was cleverly reinvented as glacial fantasy figure Lana Del Rey, given worldwide Next Big Thing status and, by craftily releasing this debut during the year's most fallow period, has surely ensured herself a chart-topper.

Simple? Hardly. Indeed, the masterplan is wobbling. The dreary debate regarding her "authenticity" was always a shoulder-shrugging irrelevance; likewise whether she's had plastic surgery (if she has, she's making an effort; if not, she's remarkably beautiful). More seriously, a calamitous, universally mocked performance on the prestigious Saturday Night Live show kiboshed her American career before it began and she cancelled a London show this week. Even so, the only question is whether she's any good or not.

Video Games suggests she is. With its harp-style flourish, heartstring-tugging melancholy and irresistible melody, it's four minutes 41 seconds of pop perfection. The perhaps predictable problem is that it towers over Born to Die, an Empire State Building in a field of bungalows, and no matter how hard Del Rey strives, you're left seeking further greatness.

Diet Mountain Dew finds her womanly vocals slipping into little-girl tweeness; National Anthem's mantra "money is the anthem of success" is only one example of gibberish dressed as depth and you wish she'd sing properly rather than slurring through Million Dollar Man.

Born to Die is no disaster but it's no work of genius. Much as Lana Del Rey aspires to be Lady Gaga's successor, she may well be Clare Maguire's. Who? Exactly ...
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

THE 2 BEARS
Be Strong (Southern Fried)
****

Few would have expected the best dance album of the year so far to come from a side-project by one of too-clever-by-half electropop nerds Hot Chip. Joe Goddard sounds like he's having much more fun with his mate and fellow DJ Raf Rundell as The 2 Bears, labouring the gag somewhat by dressing as bears, employing a ghostly sample of The Teddy Bears' Picnic on the opening track here and giving the novelty house of their first single the title Bear Hug. But there's genuine passion beneath the smiles, coming through on less clubby tracks such as the blissful horns and glockenspiel of The Birds & the Bees and the glorious comedown swoon, Faith. For moments such as this, it's worth following the Bears. David Smyth

LEONARD COHEN
Old Ideas (Columbia)
****

The old goat is back, with cloven hooves and rasping breath. The passage of time, which Cohen feels keenly, has done nothing to diminish the heft of this artist's clout: his voice growls out from some subterranean bear-pit of human experience with undiminished authority. Leonard Cohen, as he never fails to remind us, has experienced the dark downside of life but he also knows that the upside gleams.

Old Ideas sparkles grimly from the opening Going Home, wherein he characterises himself as a "lazy bastard living in a suit". The pace throughout is sedate, contemplative, remorseful and forever looking for a fresh break. Amen, Show Me the Place, Anyhow and Darkness are all laments for lost moments of love and dirty pleasures, wherein regret and repentance vie with the desire to give it one last shot. Wonderful accompaniment from female backing singers and musicians. PETE CLARK

DJANGO DJANGO
Django Django
(Because Music)
****

First things first: this east London fourpiece don't sound anything like Belgian jazz legend Django Reinhardt. But that's okay - because they don't really sound like anyone else either. There are nods to Fleet Foxes in the close harmonies, and echoes of Vampire Weekend in the polyrhythms, but the overall effect is of something daring and different. Produced in the bedroom of drummer and bandleader David Maclean, there's a suitably intimate feel to opening track Hail Bop. Yet Django Django's best trick is underpinning the folkie melodies with assertive beats and basslines, as on album highlight Love's Dart. Don't rule them out for a Mercury nomination.
RICK PEARSON

RODRIGO Y GABRIELA AND C.U.B.A.
Area 52 (Rubyworks)
***

Mexican guitar duo Rod & Gab are extraordinary the first time you hear them. The first concert I saw was at Glastonbury as they traded lightning-fast guitar riffs with rock 'n' roll attitude. They sell out concert halls around the world and have shifted 1.2 million albums. But they are what Lord Sugar would call a "one-trick pony". I was hoping that this album with a 13-piece Cuban band and Alex Wilson on piano might be something different. But most of it is just a lot more musicians playing furiously without let-up. When things calm down momentarily on Ixtapa, for an Anoushka Shankar solo on guitar, it is a blessed relief. It's probably better live - at the Brixton Academy, February 24. SIMON BROUGHTON

KENNY WHEELER BIG BAND
The Long Waiting
****

Canadian-born trumpeter/composer/arranger Kenny Wheeler has spent most of his life in Britain, and this album represents a masterly late-blooming chapter in his long and distinguished career. An eight-movement suite of mature themes, each as solidly constructed as any of his earlier work, it sets Wheeler's warm-toned flugelhorn against the lustrous backdrop created by wordless vocalist Diana Torto and 18 of London's leading studio aces. It's a truly all-star line-up, bristling with killer improvisers such as altoist Ray Warleigh, baritonist Julian Arguelles, guitarist John Parricelli and pianist John Taylor, all recording artists in their own right. Their solo skills make telling contributions to the music, and the orchestral ensembles, particularly those involving the trumpet and trombone sections, are richly satisfying. Highly recommended.
JACK MASSARIK