A double Del Rey album? That really is an awful lotta Lana...

If Lana Del Rey didn’t exist, she would have had to invent herself – and she did. As Lizzy Grant, she was just another wannabe. Becoming Lana Del Ray and releasing an album didn’t change that, but when she went from Ray to Rey and recorded Video Games, she became a sensation.

Eleven years on, the world could be tiring of her. Her persona – all that damaged glamour, as if she’d been dreamt up by Raymond Chandler – might well feel dated. Instead she is getting even bigger.

The American magazine Interview has her on its March cover, dressed as a bad-ass bride. At magCulture, the London magazine shop, this issue received the most pre-orders of any item in its eightyear history.

For all her languor, Lana is a hard worker. Her new album, her ninth, is 77 minutes long. She does like harking back to another age and this time it’s the heyday of the double album, so often a mixed blessing. Side one is terrific, side two is terrible, side three is middling and side four is serviceable.

The magic, as usual, lies in a few ballads. The album opens with three of them: The Grants, a bluegrass chant that morphs into a thing of wispy beauty; the title track, which goes the other way, from a whisper to a choir; and Sweet, simpler but just as effective.

All three take you into Lana’s world – her family, her favourite songs (from Hotel California to Harry Nilsson’s Don’t Forget Me), her hopes and fears. ‘Love me till I love myself,’ she pleads. She sings superbly, wrapping her voice around the melodies.

The trouble is that there are still 13 tracks to go, and only one is a bull’s-eye – Margaret, another ballad, about the real-life romance between Del Rey’s producer, Jack Antonoff, and the actress Margaret Qualley. Antonoff is a trusted foil to female stars from Taylor Swift downwards, but you do wonder if he ever tells them they’re going awry.

The two ‘interludes’ here are pure tedium, one of them a rant by a preacher, to which Del Rey adds only laughter.

The joke is on us, made to feel like fools for not hitting ‘skip’.

A year ago Self Esteem was wowing a crowd of 350 in a pub in Huddersfield. Now she’s in Hammersmith, playing to 3,500 and doing three nights. The rise of Rebecca Taylor has been a joy to watch. Her songs are mostly just a chant, a beat, an eye-roll and some deft dance moves. But now there’s something else: a powerful resonance.

Her withering feminism is so infectious that the gig turns into a giant singalong. She takes her fury and turns it into fun.