My-Pod: Music and Stuff - Marina and the Diamonds/Sade...

After 25 years working as a mobile DJ and slowly losing track of my own taste in music my retirement from the decks at Christnmas is giving me the chance to rediscover my love of good pop music - indeed, just good music; not the dreary, samey, droning r'n'b stuff which clutters up the kid's Top 40 these days. No, I'm on the look out for good songs, written and performed by artists, old or new, who have a bit of real talent about them, old faces storming ahead into new chapters of their careers or fresh new faces who haven't taken the easy "I want this more than anything" Simon Cowell route to number one.


So to the brilliant Marina and the Diamonds and her first album 'The Family Jewels' which has just been released. Having come second in the BBC's 'Sound of 2010' new talent survey (behind Ellie Goulding whose first single 'Starry Eyes' has just charted) Marina is off to a belting start with her extraordinary first collection of songs. Abergavenny-born 24 year old Marina Diamanditis has crafted a slick and powerful set of tunes which evoke a host of other landmark female vocalists such as PJ Harvey, Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper and with even a touch of Gwen Stefani here and there. She's also thrown into the mix something new and unique in an album which ranges from out-and-out stomping pop, crunching electronica, coruscating demolitions of modern society and its cultural mores (current hit single 'Hollywood' suggests Marina's no huge fan of the US of A) and her blisteringly-sharp lyrics (most of these songs are all Marina's own work) are as funny and clever as they're savage.

Now I love a pop song an in track two you'll find 'Shampain', the best song Goldfrapp have never recorded, a tune so impossibly memorable it will, guaranteed, lodge itself in your brain and stay there forever. It's raw, big, brash and infernally catchy. It sounds as if it was torn from the set list of some big-haired electropop band from the 1980s and projected forward to the 21st century. It's brilliant but it's not alone. Album opener 'Are You Satisfied' sees Marina chronicling her struggle for acceptance in a cynical musical world and 'I Am Not A Robot' crackles with the punk ethos of indivuality against conformity. These are uniformly angular, awkward songs and yet they burn with the power of Great Pop. Mostly short, always sharp, they're all richly tuneful - 'Oh No!' is right up there with 'Shampain' - and sometimes even oddly unsettling ('Obsessions', 'Rootless', 'Numb'). Marina's voice is powerful and ballsy, oozing with a confidence we've no right to expect from a newcomer on their first album. But 'The Family Jewels' is probably the most exciting not-a-duff-track-guvnor-honest album from a new talent I think I've ever heard. If you're as tired of the conveyor belt of identikit Mariah Carey wannabes churned out by you-know-who or if you just love a good, slightly off-kilter singalong pop song, you need to get your hands on Marina's 'Family Jewels'. Ooh and, indeed, er...

Speaking of 'diamonds' Stuff has also been listening to...


Those of us of a certain age all have a Sade album in our collections. It's pretty much obligatory, it's on vinyl and it's almost certainly 'Diamond Life', Nigerian-born Sade Adu's sophisticated debut album from 1984 (1984!!). No-one has really needed another Sade album ever since and whilst she's released a handful of other albums since 1984, nothing's summed up her style and her purpose like that first one. But she's slipped out of a ten year exile in 2010 and caught my attention with the sinuous, military beat of her new single 'Soldier Of Love' which has enjoyed some play on our more discerning radio stations which prefer not to air a non-stop diet of shouting and which, in more civilised societyy, would be nestling snugly near the top of the Hit Parade. But it isn't. The same-titled album is out now and, whilst nothing on it's likely to be burning up a dance floor near you any time soon, it's another rich and smooth set of songs, characterised as ever by Sade's smokey vocals and sparse, to-the-point lyrics: "It's the wild, wild west...doing my best" she sings on the title track - and who could disagree? That's really as complex as Sade gets lyrically.

But it's not so much about the lyrics with Sade, it's about the atmos, the ambience. And the ambience here, as ever, is chilled to room temperature - preferably dinner party room. The beats are slow and pulsating, the music washes over you but fortunately the songs are on the right side of memorable. There's good stuff here from the upbeat 'Moon and the Sky' to 'Skin' and 'Babyfather'. Clever, restful adult music. Do yourself a favour, pick up a copy of 'Soldier of Love' and bung it on your dansette of a Sunday morning (after you've listened to 'Weekend Wogan' on Radio 2, of course!) while you're flicking through the supplements. It'll set you up good and proper for the week ahead.