Electra Heart is the second album from Marina Diamandis, better
known as Marina and the Diamonds. It is tasked with maintaining
the standards of her debut album The Family Jewels and is
produced by a cache of old school and A-List producers: Dr Luke
(Katy Perry) and Liam Howe (Sneaker Pimps) but mostly (9 out of
12 songs) Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen, Kylie) and Rick Nowels
(Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Lykke Li).
BBC Review
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Marina Diamondis, aka Marina and the Diamonds, doesn't make
things easy for herself. For her follow-up to 2010's excellent
debut The Family Jewels, she's created a sort of semi-concept
album about female identity, focusing on various character types
(Bubblegum Bitch, Homewrecker, Teen Idle etc) and disseminating
their traits over throbbing electropop and plaintive piano. Songs
focus on a recent breakup, creating a strange dichotomy between
tracks that want to be enjoyed from a distance, almost
ironically, and those that pull you sharply into her world.
Opening with the fizzing, Avril Lavigne-like stomp of Bubblegum
Bitch, a sort of intro to the concept (“Dear diary, we fell
apart, welcome to the life of Electra Heart”), it's an album that
takes the template of The Family Jewels – slightly off-centre pop
songs with dramatic vocals – and refines it. First single
Primadonna, produced by pop behemoth Dr Luke, keeps a lot of
Marina's charm but bolts it onto a big reverberating beat that
explodes into a sky-scraping chorus. The State of Dreaming sounds
like Kate Bush (sorry, sorry) fronting Coldplay, while the vampy
Homewrecker mixes spoken-word verses with a stompy chorus of “I
broke a million hearts just for fun”.
But it's when she's dealing directly with her emotions that
Electra Heart shines brightest. Lies – given extra gloom wobble
sadness by Diplo – unpicks a relationship falling apart in
devastating detail, with Marina's unique voice pushed to the
front as the entire song seems to sigh and shrug to an end.
Similarly, Starring Role is heart-rending in its simplicity,
Marina exposing herself (musically speaking) over a toy box piano
riff and drum patters. Perhaps Electra Heart's oddest moment is
Teen Idle, wherein the album's two sing sides merge to create
something singular. “I wish I'd been a teen idol, wish I'd been a
prom queen fighting for the title / Instead of being 16 and
burning up a Bible, feeling super super super suicidal” she sings
in a childlike falsetto as a million Marinas repeat the “super
super super suicidal” refrain like some mawkish choir.
There are moments where the songs themselves aren't quite
interesting enough to prop up Marina's voice; and the inclusion
of the teaser single Radioactive would have perked up a second
half that sags slightly. But these are minor quibbles. Electra
Heart manages to balance the ironic and the heartfelt, the quirky
and the mainstream, the real and the fake with remarkable omb.
--Michael Cragg
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