“ W h at e v e r I g o o n t o d o i s g o i n g t o b e v e ry d i f f e r e n t a g a i n . I wa n t t o d o t h i n g s t h at a r e c o m p l e t e ly o u t o f t h e m a i n s t r e a m .” - M a r i n a Diamandis
In the Frootgarden If you’ve been lucky enough to see Marina play live before, you’ll know how immersive her show can be. Her touring schedule for ‘FROOT’ is set to be no different: she’s going to be rolling out a huge electric garden, and those lucky enough to be in attendance at her one-off DIY Presents... gig at Oslo, London got the first tiny taste. HER STAGE SET UP... “It’s more for a festival setup, but my plan is to build a really surreal stage design based upon space, planets and fruit. I wanna create a really amazing electric garden, but it won’t go into production until the festivals.” HER MERCH STALL... “I want it to be like a fruit stall! We have the Scratch’n’Sniff vinyl and I’m gonna try and do t-shirts for tour. It’s really good - I’ve seen the finished product. Those things are important to me: I love creating a package.” 42 diymag.com
the dark dramatics of ‘I’m A Ruin’ and the 60s shuffle of ‘Gold’, ‘FROOT’ is a multi-faceted pop gem, as intriguing and unexpected as it is brilliant. One of the best examples comes in the album’s opener ‘Happy’; a not quite what-it-says-on-the-tin affair. “I feel like, after ‘Happy’, people go like,” she stops to put on a charming fake accent, “‘So, Marina, what is the key to happiness?!’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know, I’m not the Dalai Lama!’ Listen to the lyrics, they’re actually quite depressing!” she laughs. ‘Happy’ was less a eureka moment or a declaration of intent; instead inspired by the gradual realisation that for the best part of the last decade, she had been at an emotional standstill and now was time for change. “I had felt the same way for almost ten years of my life, since I was eighteen. Now I’m 29 and that’s kind of what led to writing that song,” she continues. “It just came from being emotionally static for a long time. Especially post-Electra. It was such an extreme and stressful two-year period, not just in terms of music, but with my health and voice. I had loads of problems and things go wrong, and I just didn’t wanna be like
that anymore. It certainly wasn’t a thing where I was like, ‘I’m not gonna do this anymore. Tomorrow I’m gonna wake up happy.’” That’s evident enough from the song’s lyrical journey. “I think it was more about having realisations about what you like and what you don’t like.” It’s a thread that runs throughout the album; the cold-daylight reflection of ‘Blue’, the voice of advice in ‘Better Than That’, the glorious admission of ‘Immortal’. Marina becomes both the devil and angel on her own shoulders, tempting fate and throwing her chips in, betting them all on her own happiness.
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t isn’t just lyrically that Marina takes control, either. Musically, there’s an eclecticism that feels natural yet refreshing, and it’s a credit to the band-like dynamic that she was intent on exploring. “It’s about what the song needs. I think I was always really pedantic before when I was involved in production,” she adds, “but I think this time because - from the start - I made it clear that I wanted to co-produce it, it was a completely different vibe from the off. That allowed me to arrange things in the way that I wanted.