Singles

Marina & the Diamonds - The Crown Jewels EP

Alisha Ahmed 14/07/2009

Rating: 3/5

Marina & the Diamonds is all too obviously Warners' answer to Universal's Florence & The Machine.

But if the comparison was everything, and this was musical top trumps then Marina would just lose and go, which is definitely not what is gonna happen. And in a way, I'm glad she's set to stick around.

If the comparison was the character, the melody, the visual, then Florence< is just too perfect to have any competition at the moment. And that's why Marina picks details from others such as her label-mate Little Boots (and pretty much 98% of current pop music) when she takes her main inspiration from the 1980s sounds and visuals.

She has a deep, dense voice rather like the aforementioned Florence in her Amy Lee moments, and her Crown Jewels EP, following up her only single so far "Obsessions", has more edgy(non)melodies than most of "Lungs".

Tuneful lead off track "I am not a Robot" also has a video, that among other things got featured on perezhilton.com they're not even trying to market her as indie as Flo, which at least, is more honest of them.
According to the last.fm listening charts "Seventeen" should be the best song here, topping the most listened to list, but I feel like disagreeing and I prefer to focus attention on the third song "Simplicity" which is definitely nicer, but nothing close to "I am not a Robot".

Which is the reason behind why this 4-songs EP, containing a very good song, and 2 mediocre ones (and a remix of the aforementioned which is better not to mention at all) unfortunately falls on a less-than perfect mark.
But I like to be hopeful, and maybe whatever's coming next from Marina & The Diamonds will pick from the good rather than the bad of this, and will deliver us an album comparable to "I am not a Robot's" quality.

I honestly hope so, but so far, I'm not that impressed. A strictly mathematical average though brings me to give a full sufficiency mark to this, based on this split

"I am not a robot" : 5
"Seventeen" : 2
"Simplicity" : 3.5
"I am not a robot (starmsmith 24 carat remix)": 1