Formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds (hold the Diamonds are Forever/A Girl’s Best Friend jokes, please) and now simply as Marina, that cull was a result of the revelation that her identity was overly entangled with her artistic persona.
The “change’ aspect has largely materialised in the form of her shortened nom de guerre. After the tour in support of her well-received third album, Froot, wound down in 2016, the Welsh native temporarily stepped away from the limelight, recently admitting that she had had "a tricky three or four years" during which she contemplated her future as a pop star. There’s lots to love and little to fear here.They say that a change is as good as a rest – and Marina Diamandis has taken both in recent years.
As one of the most intriguing creative pop forces of the past decade, it’s a smart move. She’s not cast aside the things that made her great, but rather refused to compromise her vision any longer. If anything, ‘Love + Fear’ feels like a clean slate for Marina. ‘True’ shimmers with possibility, while ‘To Be Human’ might glance at some of the more difficult aspects of modern life, but finds unity in confusion.
Packing most of the pre-release offerings, as well as recent Clean Bandit team-up ‘Baby’, it’s an assertively sugar-sweet collection. ‘Love’, on the other hand, is where the big moments dwell. Even in its slowest moments, there’s a swell of defiance. ‘No More Suckers’ is more of a fightback bop than a defeated lament, while ‘Soft To Be Strong’ revels in Marina’s sharp as glass falsetto. Yes, the second half does deal with more weighty emotion, but musically it never descends into the murky darkness, every difficult moment of introspection refusing to dwell. While the obvious path would lead to a juxtaposition of light and shade, Marina is smarter than that. Personas and protective shields cast aside, ‘Love + Fear’ is one of the best in the game at her most open and honest.Ī two-part album – ‘Love’ and, quite obviously ‘Fear’ – there’s a crystal clarity to Marina two-or-three-or-possibly- four-point-oh. Shedding her ‘and the Diamonds’ postfix, Marina is blossoming into the perfect present-day pop icon. While she’s hardly a shrinking flower in the ‘profile’ stakes, it’s still far from enough.īut not this time. Three albums of interesting, personality-focused pop music that always had Big Ideas behind them should, in any right-thinking universe, have made her a household name. Or if we do, we certainly do not appreciate her enough. We – collectively, as a planet – don’t deserve Marina.
0 kommentar(er)
