Between the early critical acclaim and the release of an actual album, Lily Allen and Adele both had to face a brief media backlash. But look where they are now: Allen, now Cooper, “retired” on a high, and apparently every single person in the UK owns at least 5 copies of Adele’s latest album, if chart stats are anything to go by.

All this should be reassuring to Lana Del Rey, the hotly-tipped American import who set tongues wagging with her beautifully haunting ‘Video Games’ before attracting negative attention for everything from her background to a disastrous performance on Saturday Night Live. All this, of course, before her first album had even been released.

But it’s here now, and Born To Die should keep detractors quiet for the time being. It would be a big ask to expect ‘Video Games’ to be matched, and frankly it’s not, but the 25-year-old’s first record is still as classy an affair  as you’d expect. The unnerving title track is the second-best song on the set, again showing Del Rey, real name Lizzy Grant, at her deadpan best.

When not dark and smoky, her vocals are dark and shrill, such as on the deliberately squawky ‘Off To The Races’, and on every track she seems to fancy herself as the leading lady in some kind of film noir, dressed to the nines in a loud red dress, whiskey in one hand and long, Cruella de Ville-like cigarette in the other. It works, and whether its all an act or not, the big Lana Del Rey character and her lavish choice of instrumentation penetrate every single track like a depressed Paloma Faith without the extravagant trimmings.

Its only downside is its length. The fifty-minute running time (a solid hour if you grab the deluxe edition) feels longer than it is, and doing the whole set in one sitting is more than a little tiring. But debate about the singer’s authenticity aside, Born To Die is a confident and assured début that puts a refreshing spin on the art of the pop song and establishes the industry’s newest chic chick as one with no plans on being a one-album-wonder.