She has a pretty distinct voice this Marina. I last saw her live on the NME radar tour below The Golden Silvers in early '09. Since then she's had an album out and burst into the scene. With a headline slot on the Festival Republic stage at Leeds and Reading Festival and a sell out headline tour, shes going somewhere indeed. To fair in personal opinion the album was average. I liked her demos. A lot. The album seems a bit dull. Not all the great demos are on it and they seemed to be replaced with pointless and boring songs that talk about frogs and various other strange subjects.
Onto the gig. Nice Sheffield gig. We like Sheffield gigs. So to the pub for a quick drink we went then onto Leadmill. We got into Leadmill, not much of a queue and sat... for a while. Didn't bother with the support this time, sounded pants.
For Miss Marina Lambrini Diamandis herself we got a decent enough place in the middle quite far back but still a pretty clear view. She came onstage in a most eloquent way with a video of her doing various strange things on in the background. Wearing over sized shades and a large amount of UV makeup she stood out like a sore thumb. But in the words of The Maccabees 'The most beautiful sore thumb I'd ever seen...' this girl coulda been a Bond girl. Strange fashion sense, musically talented, just stunning.... wow. My only complaint is that it feels the publicity may of gone to her head a little bit. Calling her crowd 'Her diamonds' felt like she thought she was better than the hundreds of people that paid good money to see her perform. Anyway as the stage was darkened with only UV lighting, her lips glowed as she started to sing 'Seventeen'. Possibly my favorite MATD song. The crowd didn't seem to really agree.
I dunno whether its where i was but the crowd was a bit timid. Not really moving. Apart from one middle aged guy who was camper than a pink row of tents, clapping and dancing about. Much to the amusement of the teens stood close by. Like a young, eloquent Kate Bush with only a piano and a stunning range of vocals, she transformed an exuberant crowd to hushed silence during 'Numb' followed by an equally moving 'Obsessions'. After another video and a quick change of eyewear, she returned after a teasing electro instrumental for the ego-sating 'Hollywood' which was only outdone by a dazzling rendition of 'Shampain'. For behaving on such a heady evening, her adoring Diamonds were treated to a stripped down cover of 3OH!3's 'Starstruck' before Saturday night was in full swing with the concluding 'Mowgli's Road'.
She was great, beautiful. Can't fault her. As for the crowd... well maybe I'm just getting used to this rock and roll style of gigs but it was quiet. Unnecessarily.
Peace
x
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