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| The official Marina and the Diamonds thread; New album "Froot" out now | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 22 2011, 10:47 AM (2,506 Views) | |
| Itty Bitty Piggy | Apr 25 2012, 10:10 PM Post #21 |
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I really feel like she's blown everyone out of the water with this. I was sceptical of anyone being able to topple Lana Del Rey's album this year, but I think she's gone and done it. Every song is crisp,explosive instrumentals, huge choruses and gorgeous vocals. She's managed to tackle the beast that is the dreaded "dub-step beat" and perfectly slot it into pop songs, without it sounding shoe-horned in or gimmicky. It does what the best pop always does - which is, effortlessly combine several different genres into one. The rock-pop guitars, trippy beats and operatic vocals have manifested themselves into her niche sound. Her vocal arrangements are probably one of my favourite Marina features. Jessie J wishes she had this level of control and knowledge of her vocal chords. Lyrically, it skirts a similar territory to Lana's disenfranchised sneer, or Gaga's playful fame metaphors, but there's something more youthful and innocent about her delivery. I feel like it's too early for me to really pick apart individual songs, but Starring Role, Teen Idle and Valley Of The Dolls stand out for me as immediate favourites. |
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| bulgar | Apr 25 2012, 10:19 PM Post #22 |
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this!
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| Riverwide | Apr 25 2012, 10:26 PM Post #23 |
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I've only listened to the whole album once, but I'm oddly a bit disappointed. Perhaps I was looking forward to it a bit too much. I'll be spinning it lots over the coming days though, so I'll form a clearer opinion then. I love "Lies", "Starring Role" and "Teen Idle". The only song I *really* dislike is "Living Dead". It's so repetitive and weak. |
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| Itty Bitty Piggy | Apr 25 2012, 10:39 PM Post #24 |
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Thanks, bulgar. Riverwide, I would definitely suggest giving it a few more listens. After one listen I found the constant barrage of choruses a bit too in-your-face, and the similar production style on every song left me feeling a bit cold. Two listens later though, and I'm completely hooked! I wrote-off Lana for the first few listens, and now I adore the record. |
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| Riverwide | Apr 25 2012, 10:45 PM Post #25 |
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The similar production and tempo on 90% of it was definitely one of the things I noticed about it first. I'm much more a fan of albums that have more variety in sound. I don't dislike it though and I'll definitely be listening to it a lot more. Just experiencing some initial slight disappointment. |
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| bulgar | Apr 26 2012, 03:41 PM Post #26 |
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the same-y production indeed being the album's major letdown, this is still a very strong collection of pop songs.
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| Riverwide | Apr 26 2012, 11:19 PM Post #27 |
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3 out of 5 from The Guardian. I'd go along with this. I think it's a big comedown from her debut, which while not perfect by any means, was far more striking, had much more character, bags of personality and crucially...better tunes. Most of the melodies on Electra Heart are rather limp I think. The production is really flat on 90% of it too. It could've been recorded by any one of dozens of lesser artists. I've actually gone from being really excited about this album at the start of the week, to not even wanting to buy it tomorrow. It's just not good enough. Last August, Marina Diamandis gave a confusing interview to the website Popjustice. She explained her change of direction, from the self-consciously arty singer-songwriterisms of her 2010 debut The Family Jewels – with its similarities to Sparks and Lene Lovich – to the more straightforward pop approach of Electra Heart, an album assembled by a selection of writers and producers for hire who have previously turned out hits for Ronan Keating, Dido, Katy Perry and Britney Spears. The shift was so radical, she said – "the antithesis of everything I've done so far" – that she had created a character to perform the new material, called Electra Heart, whose videos had a "Mulholland Drive/Paris, Texas vibe": cue footage of Diamandis in a blond wig and pastel-shaded 50s clothes, smoking insouciantly and trashing sleazy motel rooms with her bad-boy boyfriend. "She stands for the corrupt side of American ideology, and basically that's the corruption of yourself," she said, adding: "Everything I'm not, I'm becoming." Those cursed with a suspicious nature might suggest this whole I'm-actually-making-a-mainstream-pop-record-as-a-metatextual-comment-on-both-mainstream-pop-music-and-the-ability-of-ambition-to-corrupt angle sounds not unlike the kind of thing a smart woman might come up with after her record company had examined the sales of her debut album and suggested she either stop making records that sound like Sparks and get in the studio with the bloke who wrote I Kissed a Girl or consider gainful employment elsewhere. But the real problem is that since that interview, another female singer-songwriter has emerged playing a character that portrays the corrupting, tragic side of the American dream with a distinct Mulholland Drive/Paris, Texas vibe – sleazy motels, insouciant smoking, pastel-shaded 50s clothes and bad-boy boyfriend all included. It would appear any similarity to the former Lizzie Grant is purely coincidental – certainly Electra Heart sounds nothing like Born to Die – so it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for Diamandis, who now finds herself promoting her new direction while apparently dressed as Lana del Ray. The best tracks on Electra Heart are, in fact, not the ones involving the big-name songwriters. These range in quality from decent – the single Primadonna – to perfunctory to flatly appalling: the sub-Womanizer stomp of Homewrecker, which, alas, offers Diamandis an unmissable opportunity to rap in one of the patent funny accents that made The Family Jewels so trying. What they noticeably fail to do is what you presumably employ a big-name songwriter for: deliver the kind of melodic sucker-punch that allows them to transcend their generic musical backing. In fact, the album's highlights are those Diamandis came up with in collaboration with the producer of The Family Jewels, Liam Howe. On Fear and Loathing and Teen Idle, they strip back most of that album's excesses to let the melodies breathe and focus attention on Diamandis's singing: coolly enunciated and slightly folky, her voice is much more appealing than you might have realised, overshadowed as it was on The Family Jewels by her apparently unquenchable desire to shriek, deploy a horrible vibrato and do animal impersonations. The former is a ballad that seems to address the artistic confusion arising from her debut album's relative failure; it does that in a more straightforward, affecting way than opener Bubblegum Bitch, a heavy-handed attempt at the kind of self-fulfilling I-will-be-huge prophecy that filled The Fame by Lady Gaga. Teen Idle, meanwhile, twists the cynicism of the whole Electra Heart concept into an intriguingly nasty lyric that subverts the message of a million Hollywood teen films by apparently suggesting adolescents would be better off trying to curry favour with the vacuous social elite in their school than expressing their individuality. These two songs are good enough to make you wonder what might have happened if Diamandis had just got on with making a second album herself, not worrying too much about commerciality or alter-egos or becoming everything she isn't. Perversely, it's good enough to make you hope it does sufficiently well to grant her another shot. There's clearly an interesting pop star somewhere in there: last time she was submerged by her own zaniness, this time she's somewhere beneath some half-hearted songs, a confused concept and someone else's image. Perhaps next time – if there is a next time – she might come good. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/apr/26/marina-diamonds-electra-heart-review |
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| bulgar | Apr 27 2012, 01:23 AM Post #28 |
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Have had it on repeat since it leaked. Loving the classic-Ace-of-Base sound of some songs! |
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| bulgar | Apr 27 2012, 01:46 AM Post #29 |
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M needs to work with the incredibly talented Rick Nowels again. He's produced/written some of the strongest pop songs this year imo Marina and the Diamonds - Electra Heart "Bubblegum Bitch" (Diamandis/Nowels) "Homewrecker" (Diamandis/Nowels) "Valley of The Dolls" (Diamandis/Nowels) "Hypocrates (Diamandis/Nowels) Lana Del Rey - Born to Die "Summertime Sadness" (Del Rey/Nowels) "Dark Paradise" (Del Rey/Nowels) "The Lucky Ones" (Del Rey/Nowels) |
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| Itty Bitty Piggy | Apr 27 2012, 08:05 PM Post #30 |
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The deluxe tracks have leaked (and I think it's out in Ireland anyway). They're all rather glorious in my opinion. Buy The Stars is gorgeous. |
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| Riverwide | Apr 29 2012, 08:48 PM Post #31 |
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Phew! After a week of listening to it on and off, it finally clicked properly with me this weekend. I don't think it's *amazing*, but I really, really like it a lot! |
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| Riverwide | Apr 30 2012, 08:24 PM Post #32 |
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UK iTunes!
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| Riverwide | May 1 2012, 07:30 PM Post #33 |
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"Primadonna" might actually move up into the Top 10 in the UK this weekend. It's at #11 and #43, but combined it would be #8. It'd be her first Top 10 hit! The album has a good shot at #1 also! |
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| Riverwide | May 2 2012, 09:38 PM Post #34 |
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She confirmed that "Power and Control" will be the next single. An awful choice in my opinion. It's a decent song, but absolutely not a single. Radio won't touch it. |
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| Riverwide | May 5 2012, 12:09 AM Post #35 |
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Irish charts Primadonna up from #27 to #3 Electra Heart is #1
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| bulgar | May 7 2012, 01:24 AM Post #36 |
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yay! |
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| TheBitterEnd | May 10 2012, 07:45 PM Post #37 |
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I've listened to the new album a few times now. REALLY like it!! |
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| bulgar | May 31 2012, 09:35 PM Post #38 |
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the new video for "POWER & CONTROL" |
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| wigsnatcher | Jun 1 2012, 12:37 AM Post #39 |
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Not here for Mehrina and the Cubic Zirconias. |
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| Riverwide | Jul 9 2012, 09:06 PM Post #40 |
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New song for the US and will be the 3rd single in the UK: |
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