Marina & The Diamonds - The Family Jewels

At last year’s Electric Picnic this listener went to check out Marina And The Diamonds, following a tip-off from a fellow Ragged Words contributor (who shall remain nameless). So irritating was her onstage persona that he fled within ten minutes. But, as this year’s pre-ordained smash success, and with a crack team of producers and management to nudge her in the right direction, surely she can’t reach the same levels of irritation on record? Sadly, she can, and does.
 
That Marina Diamandis can knock out a decent tune is not in doubt – album opener ‘Are You Satisfied?’ showcases her talents as a songstress from the get-go, while ‘Mowgli’s Road’s chorus is gloriously winning – but her vocal style seems purpose-built to have you reaching for the fast-forward button. Seemingly unsure whether she wants to sing in a Florence Welch holler, Amy Winehouse Motown drawl or Kate Nash cock-er-nee accent, she decides to attempt all at once, and many others besides, often with a dose of Auto-Tune thrown in for good measure. She also seems to have a real problem with vocal phrasing, constantly emphasising the wrong part of the word. It’s monstrously annoying, enough to make you shout “Stop it, just sing the words properly!” at the speakers.

The lyrics are no great shakes either, a series of vapid clichés and box-ticking exercises. The idea appears to be to convey what a bonkers gal Marina is. ‘Obsessions’ details her inability to choose a brand of crackers down at the supermarket (“They’re all the same, but really they’re not”), while she feels compelled to yell “I’m a fucking wild card” on ‘The Outisder’. Set to an undemanding backdrop of over-produced piano pop and the sort of autopilot na-na-na choruses made fleetingly popular by Kaiser Chiefs, the whole album fails to ring true from start to finish. What we’re left with is the sonic equivalent of that scene in The Office where David Brent points inanely at the stuffed Flat Eric and breaks into laughter for the camera to show how out-there his firm is.