As I sat down on autopilot to listen to my weekly assigned album, I pressed play on the first track of the album and something happened: I began to smile. In the midst of an extremely frustrating, stressful day, the voice of Marina Lambrini Diamandis, accompanied with a simple piano track, filled me with joy. I realized that in the middle of College Library I was sitting alone with a huge smile across my face, as if I had just won a thousand dollars. The simplest track on the album made me remember all over again why I fell in love with music in the first place.
Marina and the Diamonds released her third album Froot March 13. The Welsh singer/songwriter has not released any music since her 2012 electropop album Electra Heart. Froot is the result of over three years of writing for Diamandis, and her voice gives her a distinct indie pop sound that has brought her much success. The singer has been known to describe herself as “an indie artist with pop goals.”
As I continued on with the album, I found that it primarily consists of upbeat dance tracks. Diamandis does manage, though, to incorporate interesting and poetic lyrics into her pop sound. For example, the eleventh track, “Savages,” deals with issues of war, rape and indecency in the human race. In addition, the fifth song on the album, “Forget,” has a catchy beat that sounds like a dance anthem in which the lyrics get lost. But in reality, the song has a thoughtful message with well-designed parallels including “Life was like a tipping scale/ Like an abacus I played with/ Counting every win and fail.”
In the world of pop music, songs and artists can often seem to sound the exact same. Marina and the Diamonds continues to succeed in her creativity and ability to stand out in a homogenous crowd. The artist has her own sound that is difficult to compare to anyone else. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Froot, but my only regret was that I wish that the album featured more ballads, similar to that of the first track on the album “Happy.” Overall, this was my first time really sitting down and listening to Marina and the Diamonds, but I have no doubt that this will not be my last.
Grade: B+
