Though most fail to recognize an album’s narrative drive, a cohesive story does a lot to augment an album’s complexity as well as its likeability.
Musical narrative is what ultimately drives Kanye West’s body of work and cements him as one of today’s greatest music producers. Narrative allowed My Chemical Romance to present “The Black Parade” without seeming too bombastically sophomoric in its blunt abstractions.
In “Froot,” the new album by Marina and the Diamonds, “Happy” is the most immediately grabbing song, the most episodic and it is definitely the happiest song on the album. It details the emergence of our protagonist from her depression, and her decision to open herself up to the idea of a relationship. The track begins quietly and gradually builds to a climax of self-celebration.
However, after “Happy,” “Froot” descends into self-hatred and anxiety. As the album progresses, it explores the narrator’s internal sadness (“I’m a Ruin,” “Blue”), her struggle with labels and ideals (“Can’t Pin Me Down,” “Solitaire”), the inevitable dissipation of her relationship (“Forget”), her bitter jealousy (“Better than That”) and her consequent indictment of humanity (“Savages,” “Immortal”).
The title, “Froot,” encapsulates the character we follow throughout the album. The track of the same name establishes the discussed “Froot” as a character, a woman who boasts her sexual availability now that she is “plump and ripe.” This song features the band’s characteristic euphemistic morbidity in lines such as, “Leave it too long I’ll go rot / Like an apple you forgot / Birds and worms will come for me / The cycle of life is complete.”
The song “Froot” touches on several core themes of the album, most prominently the pressure to find someone to be with before you die and become “rotten.” The intentional misspelling of “Froot” draws attention to the impulse that something is off, that the fruit is not as sweet as it seems it would be.
Marina and the Diamonds has often clashed happy melodies with nihilistic thoughts. The lines, “I’m gonna live, I’m gonna fly / I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna die,” from their older single “Oh No!” are an example of this. In “Froot,” the band’s songs are more dismal, as though it has decided to grow up, leave behind childish things and cease entertaining notions of lasting happiness entirely.
The band, still obsessed with mortality, seems to have shifted its focus from the lewdness of materialism to the inherently disappointing nature of man. So, its work remains depressing, but now comes with less ironic musical arrangements. “Froot” is less concerned with the pointlessness of everything and more concerned with how life will inexorably let you down.
“Froot” lacks the unadulterated pop of Marina and the Diamonds’ previous albums. No song on the album quite matches the band’s trademark freneticism demonstrated in their power singles such as “Primadonna” and “State of Dreaming.” The closest “Froot” comes to this all but abandoned upbeat sensibility is “Better than That,” but even that is laced with an undercurrent of somberness.
The weakness of “Froot” lies in the standalone quality of its tracks. Apart from one another, they seem rather lyrically simple and lacking in emotional complexity. Though “Happy,” “I’m a Ruin” and “Solitaire” prove to be exceptions, songs such as “Savages” come across as uninspired.
With obvious lines such as, “Murder lives forever / And so does war / It’s survival of the fittest / Rich against the poor,” that could easily be featured in a frustrated eighth-grade activist’s poetry journal, these songs work fantastically together but some suffer upon being separated out.
To this end, Marina and the Diamonds’ new album, “Froot,” succeeds. Though it has fewer tracks with “hit single” potential, it is extremely tight in its arrangements and overarching story. It is no coincidence that “Froot” begins with a song called “Happy,” and ends with lyrics like, “But nothing lasts forever / This world is in a losing game.”
