Quote:
Originally Posted by orbitalaspect
All I hear is a decent lyricist trying to make a generic pop album and literally making a record more generic than generic pop. I'm not sure what she aimed for here, but if it wasn't to write a bad joke, she missed the mark.
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Ok... that's kinda harsh.
You know, it's quite funny. I sat in the car yesterday with my friend and we have been listening to the album. Put it on shuffle, so we didn't listen it in the meant to be order. My friend, who's not really into MARINA by the way, found most of the songs quite unlistenable for the same reasons you have stated there. A lot of repeating, songs that sound almost the same, generic.
I on the other hand, don't really mind. Most of the times I am into a good melody and I think that both Love + Fear have easy melodies I can follow. That's why I don't really like her first album, thought it was messy, Electra Heart was a good start, but FROOT was for me uninteresting in some way.
Handmade Heaven sparked my interest again and it was for Orange Trees to start liking the direction she is going. It felt more light-hearted. Good music, that don't really require innovative sounds/arrangements or difficult to understand lyrics.
Did MARINA really set the bar high with Love + Fear? I doubt it. But I like the concept, and her using her classes in psychology to put a decent album together. Maybe you experience some lack in depthness, because she really arranged the album in one half: happy, lovely, friendly, care-free, and the other half in anxiety, sadness, and carefulness. It doesn't come together, because as she stated herself: once you are in a place of love, you can't be in a place of fear and vice versa. I think she put much effort in the concept and seperating the songs by mood/vibe, that it might give some listeners, like you, the feeling that the songs sound kinda the same or are filled with 'meh'-songs just to keep the album going. Perhaps if she mixed both albums, she wouldn't be including the songs.
Anyway, I don't mind the division between the two albums. I like singing along with some, and other songs I will skip. I haven't been listening to Fear throughout, to be honest - so I will give this one a go once I am in my car.
Somehow I am really enjoying the 'radio-friendly' / easy-to-listen-to sound of this album. The songs you mentioned are to me sometimes too hard to listen to, or hard to put in any mood. Love + Fear, how generic it might be, is for me a good, light-hearted album I really enjoy. It sparked my interest in MARINA again.