FROOT review
The third album from the sing-songwriter, Froot, heads in a direction vastly different from her 2012 release Electra Heart.
Those who know Marina Diamandis as the cute star with a tiny black heart on her upper left cheek will be shocked to note the evident transformation from her sophomore album, Electra Heart, to her 2015 release, Froot.
Gone is the fictional diva, Electra Heart, that Diamandis created as a satirical representation of pop culture. Instead, Diamandis has finally decided to uncover who she is in the form of this third album.
Froot is full of ballads and pop jams, all mixed together in an effort to capture what Diamandis really cares about. She told Time that “Froot felt symbolic of how I feel now: ripe and ready as an artist and as a person, like I’m ready to really enjoy things.”
The first track on Froot, titled “Happy,” is a piano-based ballad showcasing Diamandis’ powerful voice. She mentions that she has finally “found what I’ve been looking for in myself.”
Similarly, she expressed in the song “Froot” that she’s “Hanging like a fruit, ready to be juiced,” continuing with the album’s theme of Diamandis finally being comfortable with who she is.
“Can’t Pin Me Down” is another one of the songs on Froot that showcase Diamandis’ unique perspective on matters like feminism. Though she admitted that there are “all these contradictions pouring out of me,” she is quick to attribute that to the fact that she is “just another girl in the 21st century.”
The song itself takes on a slower pace, and Diamandis’ powerful voice takes on an echo-like quality that makes it stand out even more against the background instruments. When there is an important message Diamandis wants to emphasize, she uses the technique of a quieter instrumental to make her words, and therefore her message, louder and clearer.
Though Diamandis claims that she is not a political person, her interest in reforming society is explicit throughout Froot. Her song “Savages” is about how she fears man, not God, because these days, another day means “another tale of rape.”
She told Time that she believes “horrendous” actions like rape are natural to humans. She wrote “Savages” because she has seen how prominent rape culture has been these past few years, and she thinks it’s “sickening” that rape related incidents are always in the news. Diamandis thinks that we need to “start a conversation on why these things are in our human traits.”
Abandoning the Electra Heart character meant for Diamandis that she would get to re-enter the music industry, in a sense. Though some of her lyrics are still comedic, the satire is no longer what stands out in her songs. Now, Diamandis is ready to express who she is without hiding behind ambiguous words or fictional characters.
Photo credit: alanticrecords.com
