Electra Heart, which chronicled the fictional adventures of a pill-guzzling American siren called Electra, took Marina Diamandis to the top of the album chart in 2012. The Welsh singer credits the experience with teaching her how to write bigger, lusher songs, and she’s applied that in spades to the entirely self-penned Froot. Diamandis’s default setting is hyper-emotional anyway, so this has yielded a record of intense highs and lows, and a range of styles that don’t always join up well. Opener Happy is delicate, dignified acoustica that has her emerging from a long bout of depression: “I found what I’ve been looking for in myself, found a life worth living.” Then, disconcertingly, it’s on to the title track’s sugar-rush electro-giddiness, which offers the ooh-matron couplet “Baby, I am plump and ripe / I’m pinker than shepherd’s delight.” And so it goes, darting from Bat for Lashes-style spectral disco (I’m a Ruin) to shoegazing balladry (Solitaire) via Taylor Swiftian bubbliness (Blue). Marina’s whooping, swooping mannerisms add to the sense of dislocation – but if you allow yourself to be swept into her world, it’s an intriguing place.
