Feb
18
Album: Marina & The Diamonds - The Family Jewels
Marina And The Diamonds. It’s been a hard name to escape over the past six months, with the buzz surrounding her (and this very much a solo escapade, despite the name) building and building to crescendo this January, when pretty much every media outlet included her in their tips for 2010. Unlike some before her, the XX for instance, she’s not letting this momentum wane before presenting a debut album. And so here it is, the chance for us to finally judge whether or not all this hype has been worth it.
The problem is that really it hasn’t, not on this evidence at any rate. Try as you might, it’s very hard not to place Marina in the context for the continuing wave of new female artists and in particular Florence & The Machine (the similarity in names doesn’t help). Yet while Lungs have revealed itself to be a record of continuing depth and inspiration, The Family Jewels is shockingly one dimensional. There’s nothing wrong at all with making a pop album, but Marina could have at least tried to give it a different angle – especially and she’s been sold to us as a quirky one off. With no band as such behind her, the music seems to have been left in the hands of a committee of producers with the results lacking any degree of human emotion or soul.
With this in mind, the weight of The Family Jewels rests firmly with the force of Marina’s personality. That it shines through is not up for debate, whether it’s a particularly attractive one is perhaps more questionable. It only takes the first thirty seconds of opener ‘Are You Satisfied?’ for her to be referencing herself and after that she never lets up. This is a set of songs about Marina, her view of the world and little else. At times it’s terribly annoying, the sound of someone with nothing to say talking very loudly.
Look, this isn’t an awful record by any means. The older stuff still sounds great and ‘Mowgli’s Road’, initially off putting as a single, works much better here, an actual original idea amongst the mass produced sounds. It’s catchy stuff too, these songs will lodge themselves in your head and refuse to budge. It picks up at the end too, moving Marina into areas that suggest she could well be able to live up to the expectations that we’ve placed on her. Right here, right now however, The Family Jewels can’t be judged as anything but a let down.
Label: 679 Recordings
Released: Friday 19th February
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