The Playlist: What’s in the earbuds this week

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Lana Del Rey

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Updated: March 1, 2012 8:10AM

Lana Del Rey, “Born to Die” (Interscope) ★ 1/2

She tanked on “Saturday Night Live.” So what? Cast your attention spans back to “SNL” disasters from Ke$ha (one of the all-time worst performances in 2010), Kanye West (whose “singing” debut bombed in 2008), Coldplay (Chris Martin’s awkward attempt to fill a small space with big music in 2008), Ashlee Simpson (caught lip-syncing in 2004), on back to Sinead vs. the Pope in ’92. It’s a show of one-note comedy, so an off-key performance hasn’t exactly slowed down any musicians’ careers.

But that’ll be my only defense of Ms. LDR. Because “Born to Die” is definitely not ready for prime time.

The early singles, such as “Video Games” (which landed on a lot of best-of-2011 lists, including mine) and “Blue Jeans,” hinted at real promise, possibly even a depth that would surface above the manufactured sheen of her persona. But Del Rey comes pre-loaded with a commercial history that supports the title of this album, which is not her debut. Born Elizabeth Grant and previously billed as Lizzy Grant, she saw her first album released in 2010 for a very short time before the label yanked it. Now rechristened with a name chosen by her management and a new Petula Clark-at-half-speed sound, she’s basically this year’s Justin Bieber — we’re talking about her because her homemade YouTube spot (for “Video Games”) went viral and landed her a major-label deal.

Only the storm of hype is likely to help “Born to Die” fare any better. The album showcases a series of multiple personalities, swinging between the extremes of the Del Rey we hoped we’d love (the deep-voiced, strangely sultry chanteuse of “Video Games”) and a chirpy, squeaky, high-voiced Baby Spice occasionally springing forth and surprising listeners with her sheer ordinariness. Early in the record, the pendulum swings are heady, and the delirium is still intoxicating; her ability to sling pure kitsch (“Off to the Races”), followed by a naked romantic plea (“Blue Jeans”), all with the same deadpan straight face, makes her actually worthy of her own description as a “gangster Nancy Sinatra.”

The details of her prefab persona, however, including her own admission that she’s lowered her voice to be taken more seriously, have saturated her pre-release media blitz. It’s clear she could have used more time to shake off Lizzy and break in Lana.

After the front-loaded singles, the bulk of “Born of Die” is a long soundtrack of Del Rey in a musical thrift shop, trying on various shades of 1960s soft soul. Dusty Springfield, she ain’t. Fiona Apple, maybe (and there’s a kindred spirit who knows something about performance meltdowns). The wink we thought we caught in the early material is later a somnambulant, half-closed eyelid, sleep-walking through funereal tempos in search of a hook, any hook, and nodding off before success. Only “Million Dollar Man” clears the bank, with Del Rey begging her man and assuring him she’d follow him “down, down, down.” Which might, alas, be her precise trajectory.

Bhi Bhiman, “Bhiman” (Boocoo) ★★★★

Bhi Bhiman is hailed by his record company as “The Sri Lankan Woody Guthrie.” He’s second generation; his immigrant parents named him after Bhima, a central character in an ancient Indian text called The Mahabharata. But he grew up in St. Louis, an ordinary grunge-loving American schmo. He certainly doesn’t dote on his heritage in his music, which is pure Americana folk — the most exciting I’ve heard in a long while.

This question has been asked numerous times in recent weeks: If “The Protestor” was Time’s Person of the Year for 2011, where are the new protest songs? The answer is complicated, but it’s also very early. We’ve only seen the word “occupy” capitalized for four short months. No doubt songs are being scribbled right now with various “eat the rich” themes, but as with all movements the most lasting legacies stem from those artists with less didactic approaches — songwriters who fold the tension of the times into mundane tales of life and love. “Bhiman” is a record brimming with easily recognizable dilemmas, both economic and romantic, poured out through confident, simple musicianship and one of the most arresting voices you’ll hear all year.

A social conscience does not demand a one-track mind. It’s in this sense that Bhi can wear the Guthrie comparisons with ease. Shifting effortlessly between caustic humor and poignant revelation, and strumming his acoustic guitar with Richie Havens finesse (“Guttersnipe”) and rare Leo Kottke flash (“Mexican Wine”), he opens this sophomore album (“The Cookbook” debuted in 2008) singing the blues of a railroad urchin who ain’t got no home in this world anymore (“Guttersnipe”). By the end of the record, he subtly skewers consumer culture in a contemporary Bonnie & Clyde tale from the point of view of a dancer on a crime spree (“Ballerina”): “We got married in a Wal-Mart / Down by the franks and beans / Killed a guy in Texas, stole my grandma’s Hyundai / Now our faces on the magazine.” Pretty Boy Floyd’s kids would dig this chick.

His songs of love especially penetrate every organ on the strength of his voice — an otherworldly siren call, creamy and round, authentic and authoritarian, an androgynous mystery that’s doomed to a calendar year of Nina Simone and Bill Withers comparisons. Over the dancing guitar verses of “Time Heals,” Bhi uses his vocal instrument against the rhythm to impress upon us the determination in his quest for love; the refrain lurches almost to a halt, echoing his lyrical lament — “Time they say heals a broken heart / But time has stood still since we’ve been apart” — in a sluggish tempo that nearly stands still and always breaks your heart. The pastoral daydream of “Take What I’m Given,” all cooing harmony over breezy acoustic guitar and piano, casts a man’s yearning to “live out my days like a loose ball of yarn” against the reality of the urban rat race, concluding, “Man wasn’t made to be this tightly wound.”

As Samuel Johnson wrote of Shakespeare, “Bhiman” unites “the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition.” Bhi bemoans the fate of a North Korean forced laborer (“While the leader’s getting fatter / I feel my stomach bleed,” in the vegetative “Kimchee Line”) and calls out the airs of class put on by an American free laborer (“What you talking about, business trips? / You work at the mall,” in “Eye on You”). The love songs are sweetly melancholy, the socially conscious songs are hilariously biting. Wholly engaging.