By contrast, “Savages,” a standout from 2015’s Froot, offered a blazing indictment of human aggression that simultaneously demonstrated Marina’s strength as a songwriter: “I’m not afraid of God/I am afraid of man.”. In the past, whether Marina was working in a diaristic mode or a fictive one, she never caved to normality. It doesn't always land perfectly, but Marina's ingenuity can't be denied. She rounds things out with a moment of self realisation. Opener ‘Believe In Love’ sits near the top of Marina’s most captivating songs, crafted so elegantly you can physically feel the loss and self-doubt she’s talking about when she says: “I need to believe in love/Losing you is what I’m afraid of”. ‘To Be Human’, a song about finding light in a world that throws plenty of crap at you, reminds us of how Marina got here in the first place: through bare-faced inhibition, and a singular kind of lyrical nonsense that somehow makes lots of sense in her hands. The EP was first announced just weeks prior to its release and Benjamin Fletcher serves as the sole producer. Greg Kurstin, who produced much of Electra Heart, may work with mega-stars like Adele and Ellie Goulding, but it’s hard to imagine either of them singing, “Wish I’d been a prom queen fighting for the title/Instead of being 16 and burning up a Bible/Feeling super, super, super suicidal.” Love + Fear’s gratuitous use of melodic math seems deliberate and freely chosen. If pop albums existed as a form of meaningless escapism, Marina is keen to fly the flag for a greater, worldly purpose. The temptation of safe is undeniable, but mononyms are earned by embracing risk. Growing up, I was given the impression that it was the opposite—that to be loved in … Marina is finally back after a 4 year hiatus! After listening to the near-hour, two-disc album, I can say that her suggestion was spot on. Tweet. Marina releases first part of upcoming double album Love + Fear Marina (formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds) announced her comeback at the start of the year and launched her single ‘Handmade Heaven’ with the promise of a double album dropping later this year. Listening to the record is like slipping into a meditation exercise, with Marina as soft, soothing sloganeer: Close your eyes, and imagine you’re on a beach; just breathe, and let your worries disappear. Marina’s rhyming schemes are hardly revolutionary, and the sombre mood of makes it hard to differentiate one track from the other. Marina Diamandis has been giving life a lot of thought recently, and she’s reached a number of conclusions. It's beautiful and any serious music collector or Marina fan should buy it. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. Here’s a question: which other 2019 pop album features allusions to the corpse of the first leader of the USSR Vladimir Lenin? Review: Marina’s Love + Fear. The more boisterous ‘Baby’ – Marina’s unofficial comeback Clean Bandit collaboration – follows. Love + Fear’s gratuitous use of melodic math seems deliberate and freely chosen. Safety, as an artistic priority, can shield creativity from anxiety. Love + Fear shows her evolution as an artist transitioning from a more laid back production to a full modern day production pop record. It can also dull an artist’s edges. MARINA, otherwise known as Marina Diamandis and by her former stage name Marina and The Diamonds, has been charming fans with her bubblegum pop beats and dark lyrics since her first LP, 2010s The Family Jewels. This article is an update to the review of just the Love part of the album. RATING: 3/5. As one gets older, certainty gets harder to come by; imagine how much worse that must feel after a decade in the music biz? After a three-year hiatus that almost prompted her to give up music altogether, the pop star returned at the top end of 2019 with a new name (‘the Diamonds’ are no more, it’s just Marina now) and a song that landed a little lighter than her previous bangers. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. W hoever is familiar with the music of Marina Diamandis will probably know by now that she is incredibly good at reinventing herself through her music. Love + Fear shows her evolution as an artist transitioning from a more laid back production to a Marina is finally back after a 4 year hiatus! It was released in full on 26 April 2019 by Atlantic Records. An album of two halves, this is a singular record from a bold talent. LOVE+FEAR is an album set split into two eight-song collections and lands as MARINA'S fourth full-length record since she released her critically-acclaimed third album, FROOT, in 2015. After the opening single comes a delicious decoy: ‘Superstar’, a synth-driven pop ballad that could soundtrack a dozen sports cars careering off a cliff in a Bond film. The sentiment in the song is that when it comes to relationships, and also life, there’s a lot of strength in being soft. The chorus of “Emotional Machine” consists of facile rhyming: “I’m a machine/An emotional bein’/Since I was a teen/Cut my feelings off clean.” When Marina covered similar territory on 2010’s “I Am Not a Robot,” she wrote: “Better to be hated/Than loved, loved, loved for what you’re not/You’re vulnerable, so vulnerable/You are not a robot.” This is a staggering slide, from affecting poetry to cold calculation. It might not land perfectly, but in a time of pop puppetry, Marina is the real deal. When she sings, “There were riots in America/Just when things were getting better,” she doesn’t deign to place the lyric in context. Songs like “Soft to be strong” “To be human” and “Too Afraid” show the raw emotions that MARINA has always delivered off her previous records. Rated #1413 in the best albums of 2019. Marina is intuitive and informed enough to realize this, which highlights a rawness and intelligence that draws her fans to her music. Love + Fear (Acoustic) is the sixth extended play by Welsh singer and songwriter Marina.It was released digitally on 13 September 2019 by Atlantic Records and contains five acoustic versions of songs that originally appeared on Marina's fourth studio album, Love + Fear (2019). Love + Fear is not a bad album, just an unexpected project in relation to the singer's previous works, in this journey the singer decided to remove her indie roots and completely embraced herself in a more commercial pop sound. On “To Be Human,” Marina stretches the bridge of U2’s “Beautiful Day” to the length of a full song, and fills the space with a bizarre reference to Vladimir Lenin’s embalmed corpse. “Superstar” hints at substance by pairing foreboding minor-key synths with the opening lyric, “Before I met you, I pushed them all away,” then devolves into a standard, sugary love song. Marina – ‘Love + Fear’ review. “I know that when love is lost, it’s only fear in disguise” she coos on ‘Soft To Be Strong’. Released on April 26, 2019, on Atlantic Records, Love + Fear is an ambitious, double-album effort; it is comprised by two eight-track collections—Part “Love” and Part “Fear.” Marina elaborated the theme of the album by saying: "There are only two emotions: love and fear. Which riots? She works it brilliantly. Album Review: MARINA – LOVE + FEAR. She previously hinted at her own uncertainties with Froot’s “Gold,” and this album feels like a UPDATE: You can read our review of FEAR here. This can be a useful compositional tool; it can also be the reason Ariana Grande sings, “Now that I’ve become who I really are.” Though melodic math is wildly incompatible with Marina’s verbose, literary sensibility, Love + Fear is redolent of the stuff. We were led to believe LOVE + FEAR would be MARINA ’s most authentic album. What was getting better, and for whom? Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. Music. There is hope, though: the slivers of ‘Imogen Heap’-slash-squeaky Bieber-era Skrillex production on the soft ‘You’ lightens things a bit, alongside the sprightly ‘fuck you’ of ‘No More Suckers’. How to account for it? Marina Diamandis’ first album since shedding her “Marina and the Diamonds” identity slides from affecting poetry to cold calculation. 3. Without introspection, the lyrics of Love + Fear feel fully incidental to the songs swirling around them. ‘Orange Trees’, the second single, might be more of a swig of Fanta than a sip of fancy San Pellegrino, but there’s something about its carefree nature that makes it difficult to hate. “Come and save my day / You’re my superstar” she sings. But as ‘Love + Fear’ is split between two primary emotions, at times it does appear disjointed and confused Read Review. Last year, I talked a little bit in an article about chasing away winter about my intense love for Marina and the Diamonds. It’s tempting to blame new co-writers like OzGo, a producer who’s worked extensively with Martin, for pushing Marina toward a more easily digestible pop product. The musician’s latest album is an honest account of the insecurities which have plagued her since the release of Froots. Album Review: Marina – Love + Fear Oleva Berard May 13, 2019. Love And Fear, two EPs combined into a full album, marks Marina’s most ambitious, and mature, work to date. Words: TJ Sidhu 26th April 2019. The ‘Fear’ half of the record, as opposed to the breezy top-half, is wrought with anxiety and self-doubt, which perhaps explains why some of its tracks seem to struggle to find confident sonic footing. What ‘Love + Fear’ might lack in uninhibited pop banger energy – the kind a particular subsection of her fanbase has been begging for since she delved into the saccharine pop world for 2012’s ‘Electra Heart’ – it more than makes up for in the way it depicts an artist doing whatever the fuck she wants. Love + Fear bares two sides of the same coin, and while some may argue that hate should take the place of fear, it really is fear that is the harbinger of hate. One is that she no longer needs the imaginary ‘Diamonds’ who’ve accompanied her for the last decade. Marina - LOVE + FEAR (Album Review) Friday, 03 May 2019 Written by Milly McMahon Four years on from the release of ‘Froot’, and newly shorn of her Marina and the Diamonds sobriquet, Marina Diamandis has returned with 'LOVE + FEAR', an ambitious LP that consists of two juxtaposing parts. Nowhere is this more evident than in Marina’s newfound dependence on “melodic math,” the Max Martin-pioneered songwriting technique that involves slotting syllables into an instrumental track, even if the resulting lyric is semi-incoherent. Love + Fear, an Album by Marina. Love + Fear (stylised as LOVE + FEAR) is the fourth studio album by Welsh singer Marina Diamandis and her first under the mononym Marina. Love + Fear gives Diamandis a new accessory: insecurity. © 2021 NME is a member of the media division of BandLab Technologies. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt.“ – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying — — M arina … Another is there are only two emotions: love and fear. Elsewhere, though, Marina finds herself unable—or maybe afraid—to offer any originality. Marina has spoken candidly about the idea of autonomy in label-shaped pop, and how she’s only willing to make music if it comes from somewhere that matters. Her first priority in composing Love + Fear seems to have been returning to a place where music could be enjoyable, and generative, and healing; in a word, safe. ‘True’ is the only real misstep on the record’s first half: a preachy self-love anthem that feels like it might’ve come together without Marina thinking how the lyrics sound when sang out loud (“Don’t need to add nothing to your skin, skin skin skin / Be happy with the body that you’re in, in, in / Being who you are don’t cost a thing, thing, thing”), but it’s quickly passed over when ‘To Be Human’ arrives. Marina’s devoted following, and her many LGBTQ listeners in particular, rely on her for complex, indrawn alternatives to hollow empowerment anthems. The world's defining voice in music and pop culture since 1952. But without the characters she relied on in earlier albums, LOVE + FEAR lacks a little, well, character. But throughout ‘Love and Fear’, a record of two halves, as its title implies, the gradient of said optimism slips from glowing to downtrodden, before bouncing back again. Love + Fear shows her evolution as an artist transitioning from a more laid back production to a full modern day production pop record. An album of two halves, this is a singular record from a bold talent. referencing Love + Fear, LP, Whi + LP + Album, Ltd, 0190295478728 This album sounds uninspired and lacks the attitude and energy of the previous ones. The ‘Fear’ half of the album is riddled with concern and confusion about life itself and the darker emotions that come with it. Review: Marina – Love + Fear. … Full Review » That Marina—the lyricist who wasn’t afraid to detail the taste of toothpaste on a lover’s tongue, the vocalist who wasn’t afraid to punctuate a sentence with a feral shriek—has gone missing. On “No More Suckers,” Marina’s bratty, schoolyard-taunt delivery recalls Cher Lloyd’s excellent 2011 single “Want U Back,” elevating standard break-up fare into something witty and winking. Thus, her just-unleashed, overall fourth album, titled Love + Fear, carries only her new stage name, the mononym Marina. Marina, ‘Love + Fear’ review Shaped by a concept Marina Diamandis found while studying psychology, Love + Fear burrows past the pompous glamour of her previous records to get to the heart. Marina, Love + Fear review: An album that probes deep, universal insecurities. 6.0 | The Independent. It doesn't always land perfectly, but Marina's ingenuity can't be denied. Marina of Marina and the Diamonds is back with a new name and a new record! Lyrics are occasionally nonsensical (“Stuck in fast forward, always on the rewind”) or simply sloppy (“My love is a planet revolving your heart”). On her first trek since 2016's The Neon Nature Tour, MARINA brings Love + Fear to life while delivering fan-favorite cuts and unreleased music. Throughout both parts of the record, there’s a detachment to Marina’s vocal that implies an alien being who’s trying to figure out humanity Read Review Following three albums and a series of flamboyant concepts and alter-egos, Marina took a hiatus to figure herself out. When Marina’s vocal delivery allows a glimmer of personality to shine through the genericism, the results are lovely. “This talks about fear in love, and how that fear can finally dissipate. “We don’t have the time to be introspective when there are more important things happening,” Marina recently told Fader. Genres: Electropop. LOVE+FEAR are both lush, vibrant and powerful representations of the two main emotional driving forces behind human responses. “True” is little more than a string of bland body-positivity slogans, too stale for a Dove commercial a decade ago. But 2012’s Electra Heart also featured a battery of powerhouse collaborators, and still Marina’s distinct observations shone through. Though Marina has called “To Be Human” the album’s “most political song,” she resists making any definitive statements. Love + Fear is a double album, but the sides aren’t clear cut. 0 Shares 0 0 0. “There are only two emotions: love and fear. Marina Diamandis has a habit of ushering in new musical eras with red herrings. The fourth album by Marina Diamandis, and her first without the mantle of “Marina and the Diamonds,” arrives after four years spent battling depression and self-doubt. She took away half of her stage name and appears standing naked on the cover, filtered black and white. Marina is an artist that has a solid discography, with her previous three albums garnering scattered praise from critics and generally positive ratings from users. You can read our review of the first half of LOVE + FEAR here.. We’ve gotten the first half of Marina’s album LOVE + FEAR, which she released on April 4th.FEAR is the second half, and it’s finally here.A whole 16 tracks from Marina Diamandis to savor. Love + Fear is a giant fall from grace. ‘Handmade Heaven’, steeped in swaying whimsy – courtesy of Lorde super-producer Joel Little – and Disney-fied lyrics (“Bluebirds forever / Colour the sky”), gave us the first taste of a new record – and suggested optimism was at its core. Released 26 April 2019 on Atlantic. Firstly, I cannot write a review of this album without complementing the artwork and packaging of the vinyl edition. But the qualities that so endeared her to fans—her vulnerability, her appetite for risk, her unflinching handling of misogyny and mental illness—are absent here. Secondly, and most importantly, the music. Shedding the "and the Diamonds" appendage of her stage name, Welsh pop maven Marina emerged from a self-imposed four-year absence to unveil a revitalized approach on her fourth album, Love + Fear.Stepping into the spotlight without the protection of her former moniker, she reveals a renewed confidence and tempered optimism, shedding some of the quirkiness and cheek of her early … “Baby,” a collaboration with Clean Bandit and Luis Fonsi, stands head and shoulders above every other track, even though it already appeared on Clean Bandit’s own album last fall. the taste of toothpaste on a lover’s tongue. 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