Album Review: 5 Things About ‘Froot’ by Marina and the Diamonds
1. It’s the slowest effort from Marina to date. It isn’t hard to drop back from the frantic eccentricity of ‘The Family Jewels’ or the peroxide sheen of ‘Electra Heart’ though. There aren’t any Adele ballads or anything, but between the electro ‘Immortal’, uplifting piano-led ‘Happy’ and sweeping ‘Weeds’, it’s much more of a sedate affair than it’s predecessors.
2. You start to envy those that didn’t partake in the Froot of the Month campaign. The songs we’ve already heard are definitely the instant smashes and the rest take a little persistence to appreciate. On the flipside, there are still a couple of unearthed gems (perhaps salvaged by the leak cutting short the planned drip-feed strategy) such as the lyrical highlight ‘Can’t Pin Me Down’, quintessentially Marina ‘Savages’ and sassy ‘Better Than That’.
3. The best parts of the songs aren’t always the choruses. ‘Better Than That’ has a sublime pre-chorus and ‘Solitaire’ does intriguing melancholia perfectly on it’s verses. ‘Forget’ can boast a stunning middle-eight too, leaving the chorus card to be played perfectly by the album’s spearheading title track and is-this-the-first-official-single-like-proper-single ‘I’m A Ruin’.
4. The way Marina sings ‘Human Race’ in the penultimate track ‘Savages’ is a subtle hint at the finale ‘Immortals’. These little nods get me excited.
5. It feels like a progression from ‘The Family Jewels’, moreso than ‘Electra Heart’, as it feels like we’re speaking to the real Marina again, and not some invented alter-ego. Having said that though, she certainly missed an opportunity when she decided against choosing this era to go about dressed like Violet Beauregarde – the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka.
Words: Simon McMurdo