Lav's Music Corner

MARINA is the recently adapted moniker of Marina Diamandis who started off her career with three albums under the Marina And The Diamonds name. After a pair of critically acclaimed albums to start off her career as a tumblr-core pop sensation she released her 3rd album to mixed reviews in 2015. After a long break she had a name change and a new record in 2019 with the two part Love + Fear  release which was met with largescale critical pushback and only moderate commercial success. Review By Lav: Marina was one of the first pop starts whose meteoric rise I got to witness first hand as track after track from her debut and sophomore albums became the backing to "just girly things" tumblr posts and early aesthetic twitter accounts, both of which were a part of my media diet. I was less excited to see Marina turn in a much less interesting direction with the colorful but not very flavorful Froot . Though that was nothing compared to the disappointment of her "comeback" ...

Allie X is a Canadian pop singer who has been around for quite a long time for this to be only her second studio album. She released CollXtion   II  in 2017 but Cape God feels like more of a proper introduction, though its releases seemed to be over-taken by a number of other popular records and singles. Review By Lavender: I've never been the biggest Allie X fan in the world save for a spare single here and there. I didn't even properly review her first record because I heard it a ways after she first released it and it just didn't click with me. Given that this feels like a more proper record, and surprised me with both Troye Sivan and Mitski features I thought I should give it a proper listen. But not only did I find Allie X completely drowning in the wake of other pop stars sounds, but not even doing so particularly well. The record had only one proper single that I actually did catch back when it came out, and I should have known how predictive it would be of ...

MARINA is a British pop singer formerly known as Marina And The Diamonds who just released her first record since 2015 earlier this year. Reviewed By Lavender: I reviewed Marina's comeback album Love + Fear  earlier this year and was ultimately disappointed by it. The record features way more songs than it has good ideas and sees Marina sounding more out of touch than ever, especially given how creative of a voice she was in pop earlier this decade. I was hoping that acoustic versions of these tracks would add some intimacy that was missing in their original recordings, but unfortunately I think the EP is just the original vocal tracks from the album version of these songs, with a new instrumental added underneath rather than a re-recording. I was excited to see the tracklist for this thing was populated by some of the better songs from the record, but very few of them actually hold up in acoustic form. Superstar  is a track that gets much worse in this version becaus...

Marina Diamandis aka Marina And The Diamonds, aka Marina is an English pop singer who blew up in the early 2010's with the debut Marina And The Diamonds album The Family Jewels . She followed this up with a critically acclaimed sophomore concept album, Electra Heart in 2012. But took a much more palatable and commercial approach on 2015's Froot  and was met with mixed reviews. After a four year gap Marina is back under the new title of simply "Marina" she dropped three singles for the project, then dropped the first half of it Love  before releasing the project in its entirety as Love + Fear .  Review By Lavender: I am a firm believer to this day that the first two Marina and The Diamonds albums The Family Jewels  and Electra Heart  are excellent contemporary pop albums that found a way to separate themselves from the field and make music that has aged very well. The sharp electropop songwriting and energetic instrumentals made these songs a dream to ...