Believe Media director Jake Nava creates an atmospheric, moody world to match Lana del Rey’s dreamy delivery for her newest video “Shades of Cool” off her sophomore album, Ultraviolence. The timeless cool of California becomes the central character in the clip, which features Lana lusting after an older man who embodies an archetypal icon of Americana (played by famed Hollywood tattoo artist Mark Mahoney.)
Jake Nava captures the LA cityscapes in a stylistically retro style, taking us from the palm tree-lined streets of Beverly Hills to a swimming pool, where Lana seductively emerges from the water. Double-exposure frames create an effect as mesmerizing as Lana’s sex appeal, as she bites into a strawberry with cigarette and drink in hand and playfully dances on the shag carpet for the man. The worlds of reality and fantasy are blurred, as the action is overlaid with distorted, spectral images of Lana singing, shimmering as if she were a distant hologram.