Crashing into your ears like yet another recycled disco (apparently disco is “cool”) remix of “I Am Not A Robot”, I guess it’s fairly understandable not to be expecting much of Fools Gold’s recent messing around of Marina’s next single. But then 1:20 happens, the blistering afro-beatisms of “Surprise Hotel” are cracked out, loosening the song out into swelling euphoria, and suddenly it’s our nonchalant Marina who’s invading a brilliantly spacious Fools Gold track.
Pre order the signed single from Pure Groove here. Only 300 available, these are going to run out of the shop so get a move on! Hits the public on 26th May.
Hype. Terrible thing, really. In fact, it’s almost become a derogatory term. The thing is, hype can make you so appealing to professional journos flailing around in an overcrowded sea of “music critics” (let’s face it, having the intellectual athleticism to make a few clicks on blogger.com does not make you Pete flipping Paphides) that they are driven to fling out record reviews earlier and earlier, attempting to beat the keyboard wielding masses. Unfortunately, though, this culture of desperation breeds only a tendency to fling out shittier and shittier malformed opinions of records that they, often, have yet to get their heads around. So be this the case with Marina and the Diamonds, who, as it is mercilessly intoned in review upon review, is from Abergavenny, not that 99% of the population actually know where that is, nor that it reveals the mysteries of her debut album, “The Family Jewels”. They must get paid by the word, these days. Perhaps obscure Welsh villages come with bonus points.
Some of these early reviews came with a general air of derision and disappointment, yet failed to properly articulate where the problems lay. This led to a blanket complaint of Marina’s apparent “grating voice” (The Times, BBC, The Guardian) , an excuse that seems to serve as little more than a vague attempt to explain why these critics and their sensitive (and now grated) ears weren’t happy. Though it is, of course, a matter of taste, the suggestion that her vocal delivery is offensive is absolutely ludicrous; original, different, slightly appealingly masculine, yes, but “grating”? Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that banality is the unchallenged norm in popular music, when a sly trace of originality is treated like a venereal disease by professional critics.
The Times’ Mark Edwards goes on to suggest that Marina’s song writing lacks innovation, whilst X Factor puppets and auto-tuned R&B ironically climbs the charts in the background, and singles out “Are You Satisfied” as a “potential hit”. If nothing else, this alone constitutes enough evidence to convict the reviewer of a little too much haste; “Are You Satisfied” is unarguably streets behind “Oh No”, “Girls” or “Shampain” in terms of commercial appeal.
The BBC doesn’t start off promisingly by opening with berating Marina for being “not weird”, and then labelling her “insane” in the following paragraph. After the customary mentions of this mysterious “grating voice” and the token reference to Abergavenny, Marina is then accused of having a “massive ego”, thanks to the first line of “Oh No”; “Don’t do love, don’t do friends / I’m only after success”. The BBC clearly didn’t notice that this line was delivered uncharacteristically po-faced, yet the following line of “Don’t want money, don’t want cars / want it fast, want it hard” emerges from an explosion of those “grating”, ballsy Marina vocals. Now, call me presumptuous, but my GCSE in English Literature suggests to me that it is the second of the two couplets that is Marina talking… Of course I am not an internet-naive caveman and understand that a BBC journalist is going to get the album even before it leaks online, but the fact that the review was delivered on 12th February (after editing) can only indicate that the journalist was strangely interested in getting one up on those shit munching bloggers waiting for a leak.
The Independent’s review, meanwhile, put to bed these infantile suggestions of a “grating voice” and instead approached the record from a very different perspective. Unfortunately, this perspective was to talk about The Dresden Dolls for as long as legally possible, then reluctantly making some disinterested comments about “The Family Jewels”, before, presumably, finishing the irksome work of reviewing new music and returning to ploughing through The Dresden Dolls’ back catalogue. When not talking about other bands, though, the review is once again pioneering in the nature of its criticism, choosing to approach the album by ignoring irrelevant musical content and, instead, evaluating the obscurity of each song title. Our reviewer observes that a song about feeling numb is called “Numb”, and that another about being rootless is called “Rootless”, quite shockingly, before concluding with the opinion that a song about being guilty is called “Guilty” and, therefore, this album can only be shallow, unintelligent drivel. If we don’t take these “criticisms” at face value, we can assume that he seems to think that a lack of subtlety is the album’s problem. Yet he complete fails to either listen to or understand the irony of the song “Hollywood”, and instead complains about the obviousness Marina “wearing stars and stripes” in the song’s video… Apparently, it is not Marina who lacks the intellectual depth, but this particular reviewer who is in need of picking up on some of the record’s subtleties. It’s going to take a fucking lot of tedious su doku to exercise that grey matter, Simon Price.
Ultimately, “The Family Jewels” has been somewhat shunned by a select section of the professional press who seem diametrically opposed to pop music of any nature, only willing to praise a succession of bookish acts with the intellectual stamina of Radiohead or Battles. Fortunately, there is a large contingent of the press who are not embroiled in a restless search for the musical equivalent of a PhD dissertation on the thermodynamics of a lump of metal (ie, fucking boredom), and instead can do nothing but commend Marina for bringing a conscience back to a pop music landscape that was quickly becoming a succession of vacuous noises devoid of any sincerity or intelligence. Thankfully, these reviewsappreciatingthealbum for its importance to pop music far outweigh this limp dicked micro-cosm of reviews who seem to have convinced themselves that Marina has vocal chords capable of damaging ears, and that you’d be better off listening to The Dresden Dolls. I stated quite unpoetically back in January that “we need a pop star like Marina”, and whilst Dickens might have delivered it in a more, well, Dickensian manner, and Wilde would have found it easy to spin this truth out into a cunning epithet, sometimes subtlety and spin are far less important than the hard-hitting, straight-talking facts.
PS: You can, and should, buy the album here. Illegal downloading is so not fashionable anymore, but you can stream a few tracks above.
Music critics do love a good back-lash, don’t they? Take, for example, White Lies. Just over a year ago, there was barely a critic not getting hard over every demo that they were pumping out. Every A&R wannabe (myself included) was tipping them at every possible juncture. And then? And then we were right, and for some reason that annoys critics to such an extent that they then blame this success (that they predicted) on the perennial evil; major labels. For a reason which I cannot explain, major labels are, on a scale of evilness that runs from nunnery to Satan, the love child of Hitler and Stalin. Of course, major labels themselves are more than questionable in the way that they treat music, but most of the music that we say is released “on a major label” is just funded by the major, and released on a much more personal subsidiary. Anyway, as I was saying, this seems to be how this particular sector of the music industry works. We tip them, are proved right, and then ditch them. Fucking sell outs.
This much loved back-lash is, in my opinion, in danger of overshadowing the well established fact that Marina (& all of her Diamonds) is a pop star that Britain needs if we are ever going to counter-act strangely popular bland pop music. If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll have noticed that we’ve mentioned her countless (as in, we can’t be bothered counting) times, and asked her some boring questions here, and coupled with the fact that Marina is about to release her major label debut in February (The Family Jewels; see above), we have a dangerously White-Lies-esq situation. On top of which, her latest single “Hollywood” is going to receive an outing in early February. And it is “Hollywood” that has sparked some controversy. The thing is, I think, is that it’s so good, so unashamedly pop, nodding back to an era when you didn’t have to lack self respect to admit to liking pop music, that we know it’s going to be successful, which scares critics. Personally, I think it’s a possessive thing. Marina has been the critics darling for most of the past year, and I’m convinced that many just find it hard to let go, resorting to petulant tactics; name calling and shit throwing, generally. Fun, yes, but petulant.
On a less crazy-abstract-theory level, and on a more factual-basis, the allegations that “Hollywood” is Marina lost up the giant, stinking entrails of our good friend the major label are completely insane. First of all, “Hollywood” was written years ago, long before the scout A&R started stalking her. I don’t really need a second point, since that effectively disproves the sell out myth, but since I’ve already expended too much time arguing this case, I may as well just add that Marina’s Satanist major label is actually a subsidiary that includes the Mystery Jets and MSTRKRFT within their relatively small roster. Hardly sharing urinals with Robbie Williams then, is it.
So, yes, Charting Within Months without a doubt, but when she is burying beige pop music in her piano pounding dust, maybe we should just be happy that well, we were right (without being too self congratulating; it was pretty obvious!), instead of furiously telling our less-hip friends that “I liked her before she sold out and got popular”, because for every vapid X Factor winner, we need a pop star like Marina.
Speaking of which, it’s really quite (suspiciously?) convenient that the quite brilliant Fenech-Soler (previous Charting Within Months-ers) have conjured up a mildly sexually arousing remix of “Hollywood”. Generally, I can’t stand the whole band-turns-remixer gimmick. We get it, you’ve got a copy of Ableton, congratulations. However, Fenech-Soler definitely know what they’re doing with this enormous remix. Definitely deserving of their copy of Ableton, in my opinion.
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