The Family Jewels: Confessions of an Emerald.

I’m not the most disciplined Listener Of Albums, I have to admit. When I get my ears on a new offering, I tend to absorb it most haphazardly - a track here, a track there, repeat those two endlessly and forget completely about the eight in between until many months later, when my playlists have curled up at the ends. The upside to this is that I always have potential delights tucked into odd corners of my music folders. The downside, and of course it’s a shocker, is that I miss the full experience: to listen to the album as the artist intended. It’s a disrespectful habit at the best of times, and a downright disastrous one when you’ve got a concept album in your To Do pile.

When I get a new album and listen to it all the way through, it means one of two things. One, that I’m making an almighty effort to be a responsible listener. Or two, that I’m really that excited about the artist. I can think of a few, off the top of my head, that I gobbled as soon as I could: Era Vulgaris, by Queens Of The Stone Age. Johnny Flynn’s A Larum. Touch Up, by Mother Mother. And The Family Jewels by Marina and the Diamonds.

It was more than likely Nialler9 who turned me on to Marina; “my” first track was Obsessions, and the second that deep beat kicked in and caught me so deliciously off-guard, I was hooked. I played and replayed every Marina offering I could find, I passed her on to others, I travelled from Cork to Carlow in November just to catch a 45 minute set at a Heineken Green Spheres gig, and I texted every musically-minded buddy my cringeworthy dribblings afterwards. Obsessions indeed.

Luckily, it’s been a two-way street. Marina Diamandis is an active tweeter, an opinionated blogger … all in all, an artist who’s very much about communicating with her fans. “I am Marina,” her MySpace page tells us. “You are the Diamonds,” and, legion of strangers or not, we were very happy indeed to be her rock. On her visit to Ireland, she expressed her delight at how welcoming her Paddy-addicts had been, and christened us her Emeralds. Naturally, we were well touched, and gushed accordingly.

extract from Marina’s letter to her fans on Monday, after the release of The Family Jewels.

If all this seems a little twee to those of you used to the chilly touch of Lars Ulrich and Axl Rose, so be it. There’s something meaningful, and thrilling, about knowing that you’re actively supporting a talented new artist, and not just soaking up Ether-tweeting by a PR guy, or giving half an ear to an album from a pop tart who’ll chart no matter what time and effort you throw at her. In this age of illegal downloading and hysterical death-groans of behemoth record labels, it’s a wonderful thing - you guzzle as many demos as the artist can throw at you, give feedback, feel like you’re part of something. You may not have a smidgen of creativity in you, but your mere attention is helping create something much bigger than you are. Tis feckin’ romantic, so it is.

Obviously, Marina isn’t the only artist doing this. Social networking has narrowed that chasm between a star and his gibbering masses (or at least it appears to. But then, most of us can tell a third-party Twitter account from a genuine outlet). Being a not-so-secret DJ whore, I was delighted when my housey hero Danny Howells started asking his public, through Facebook, for advice on the track he was working on; you don’t get much more cozy than that. So the release of Marina’s debut album was a proper event for me: these were tracks I’d loved for months, songs I witnessed growing from patchy demos to polished final versions; my first listen to The Family Jewels was … God, yeah. It was a little emotional. I may have welled up a bit.

It also makes the album difficult to review. My experience, as a fan, will not match the experience of a virgin listener; someone who’s never heard Shampain before is hardly going to get the same weepy tremblings I did when I heard it all grown up; it’s a proud wee pop song, not a bloody concerto. In essence, I’m already biased by an emotional connection with the artist; I can’t tell you how good the album is, in the same way that someone’s mother isn’t the most reliable character witness. So I can say that I thought The Family Jewels was a joy from start to finish, that Shampain and Hollywood are ridiculously catchy, that Obsessions is beautiful, that the vocals on Hermit The Frog are faultless, that Girls is hilarious … but I’m a fan, and I’m going to think all these things anyway. The relationship between Marina and her Diamonds is such that she’s earned some serious loyalty and emotional investment … if there’s a better way to sell records, I know nothing of it.

When Marina finished her set in Carlow, back in November, we were on such a high that my better half turned round and cooed, “We could, like, follow her around the world or something. We could be her groupies!” Which was seriously Smash Hits of us and all, but hey! You get out of a relationship what you put in, and that Marina has given a lot of herself to her Diamonds.

Recommended: Obsessions, Mowgli’s Road, Numb. And though it’s not on the album, Seventeen. Oh, and the demo version of The Outsider, if you can find it. I’m not convinced that the album version is an improvement, though this is the only track I can say this about.

Marina’s official site

Marina on YouTube