Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

Okay, with heading like that it makes me seem a little obsessed perhaps about this musician. However,  I just appreciate diverse and good music. And Welsh singer Marina and the Diamonds ticks both of those boxes.

I first heard/saw Marina Lambrini Diamandis perform on a British chat show and at first, I didn't really think she was anything that special. The song that she was performing was "Primadonna", promoting it as a single off of her second album Electra Heart (which was released in April 2012). And it was when she was just standing there, well sitting actually, not doing anything, just looking posed and perfected by what I can only assume is a mass of hair and make-up experts, that I didn't think much of her. Actually, I thought she was just another American artist set to dominate our ears with auto-tune and screeching lyrics subtly disguised as prayers to God/our ex-boyfriend/President Obama.

At the end of the song, however, I knew that I was going to buy her second album when it came out, maybe her first one as well, if not a couple of her songs. Her voice is in no way stereotypical, no way cliche American. It has this way of being both pop and operatically influenced. There are subtle ways in which the lyrics and notes are pronounced and sung where you can definitely see a upbeat feel behind them. And the same goes for the tracks themselves. Some are definitely meant to be danced to, some to make you think, and then there are just some in between.

Of both the albums, The Family Jewels and Electra Heart, I would have to say that Electra Heart is my favourite. It just feels like in this album, Marina has had more time to refine that line between being pop and being ballad/operatic. A lot of the songs in the first album are more a mix of both, where you can't really determine if you're meant to be hardcore dancing or just sitting there quietly contemplating the meaning of your fruitful existence.

From Electra Heart, my favourite songs (yes, there's more than one) are the two that best represent the combining influences of Marina's music. The first, Bubblegum Bitch, just makes me want to run/dance/throw my hands in the air and scream. It's a fantastic song for going to the gym. It's motivational and the lyrics are very clever, talking about a girl being sexually evocative towards a boy. And as the first track on the album it introduces you (literally) to the concept that is Marina's second album.

My second favourite song is Buy The Stars. As a slower song, it's cute and makes you think, but not too strenuously. It's definitely more operatic and haunting than perhaps any of the other songs on the album. It's the last track on the album and makes for a good send off. It's kind of like, after listening to all the songs on the album, this track makes you reflect on all those songs, your reaction to them and what message you think Marina and her songs are trying to send to you. Just a really nice, resolute way of ending a great album.

Image 1 available: http://www.marinaandthediamonds.com/news,preorder-electra-heart_264.htm 
Image 2 available: http://mavenity.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/must-listen-marina-and-the-diamonds-the-family-jewels/ 

When You're Visited By Alcoholics

 I don't really know if it's my sheltered existence, but when I was first given this book, "A Visit From The Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan, I immediately thought, "Why would you want to read a book about people being visited by cheap wine drinkers?" Where's the intrigue in that?" Although I understand that a goon is also a bad guy or a thug, my current state of association with various persons of good and bad natures lead me to believe that this would be a book that they should read, not me.




However, Egan does a brilliant job of entrancing me into the pages, despite the lack of indulgent drinkers. The novel follows the lives of a select handful of characters; record producer Bennie Salazar, his assistant Sasha, her friends, his friends, enough people to make you feel as though you're entering a community, entering that other world, which is mainly based in New York. Written in short chapters from the various character's varying perspectives, you don't even necessarily have to read the entire book. You could just read a couple of the story threads and then get sick of it. But if you do want to get a good feel for the lives of these emotionally see-sawing characters, then start at the start and go from there.

And at that point it really is a page turner. You're just starting to see the characters for who they are, you're getting introduced into their lives. However, after a while the common depressing feel that runs through all the character's lives starts to get a bit too similar and I started to lose interest in where these characters were going. In fact the last couple of chapters I just flicked through, trying to get the general feel without having to really read. Despite this very small dislike of mine, the book was overall enticing and entertaining. There was a certain amount of dry wit and humour woven throughout the various threads that did give the novel a fresh edge at times.

The main theme permeated throughout the book is time and what happens when it starts to get away from us. I think maybe one of the reasons why I started to lose interest in this novel was because of this theme. Jumping from the past to the present and back again, all the separate stories revolved around this notion that "life's a goon", that being that your life is just going where it goes and you really have no control over that. Which is a bit depressing really and not something that I particularly want to think about all the time. So, like I said previously, the small amounts of humour should have been made into large amounts of humour, just so I would have been able to laugh a little and not continually think of depressing things like death and growing old.

All in all, the novel wasn't overly horrible. In fact, I would read it again. And maybe it's one of those novels that you do have to read a second time, just to get a proper feel for it. I don't know. I give this book a 3/5.

Happy reviewing everyone!



Image available: http://www.erikzona.com/tag/breteastonellis/