Photo: Bandcamp
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Los Angeles musician Marina Allen lets fly this doozy of a quote: “I spent a lot of years hiding in someone else’s pain, and it wasn’t really until I stepped into music that I was able to find my truth again.”
It could almost be a lyric; in fact it almost rhymes. And her songs are lyrically busier than most, articulating tricky concepts between wordplay and references. But well before you unpack any of that, you’re taken by the pure tone of her voice, and placid songcraft.
This is Marina Allen’s third album. ‘Deep Fake’ is the song she was speaking to Rolling Stone about, which concerns a previous co-dependent relationship. That’s touched on in lines like “thought I had to rescue/ To prove I was worthy”, and other more abstract ones like “Rotate the stained-glass window/ Now the Chapel houses the animals”.
She references the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, and finishes on the two words of the title, a term to do with simulating a person digitally. The ways this might relate to the subject matter are left unsaid.
It’s a modern idea, but Allen’s music is rooted in the past; not quite folk, but not far off. The more you listen, the more it’s apparent that under the tranquil production is a mind roiling with ideas, and some anger.
On ‘Red Cloud’, Allen sings about “the women whose aching backs and blistered skin make me coffee and burnt bread”, part of a tumble of words that are poetic, and unsettling, and hard to parse. She’ll sprint through words, then linger on the “red” in the chorus for multiple bars.
At moments like that, it’s like words aren’t enough, and melody takes over. Another one occurs in ‘Between Seasons’, when she pushes her voice to its highest register.
The music on Eight pointed Star isn’t shy about evoking what emerged from Laurel Canyon in the '60s and '70s, and there are easy reference points from Joni Mitchell to The Mamas and The Papas. A long list of contemporary artists draw influence from this period, sometimes pushing a similar sound to psychedelic extremes, but Allen is content to stay subdued, more so than on prior albums. Given the edge of her lyrics, it almost feels like camouflage.
It's an album full of dampened drums, dampened bass, and gentle guitars. There isn’t much novelty to Marina Allen. Lines like the ones in ‘Easy’ raise a brow, as she sings about “the ancient ruins buried deepest in [her] chest”, and “Doe and Fawn, the palindrome”, revealing a certain chaos beneath the ordered composition. Beyond that, she writes ear-catching, aurally pleasant songs. And that’s more than enough.
