Seeing Marina live has been on my bucket list since I started listening to Electra Heart. I have always loved her cinematic approach to music and if you watch any of her music videos, you know she likes to go big or go home. So naturally, when she announced the accompanying tour to her album Love + Fear, I knew I had to be there. I know I say that about every show I go to, but after years of wondering whether I would ever get to see her perform, I really did have to be there.

She brought Daya as her opener, but we got stuck in traffic and only got to hear her play her last song, the song she did with The Chainsmokers, “Don’t Let Me Down”. You could tell that she had done a good job of opening, because everyone was already dancing and having a great time. I was bummed to miss her set.

Marina came on at about 8:30 p.m. and opened with the lead single from Love + Fear, “Handmade Heaven”. She was accompanied by a team of four dancers/background singers and a drummer. She then played “Hollywood” from her first album, The Family Jewels. She split the show in half, the Love half and the Fear half. She chose other songs from her discography that fit into each section and it was pretty cool to think about her sitting and planning her tour, picking and choosing songs that have connected throughout her whole career. 

She played an acoustic version of “Teen Idle” that I mention not only because she played it beautifully, but because of that particular song from Electra Heart. It’s one of the darker songs on the album but she hid that behind a lot of synth and effects. When it was so stripped back, though, it really drew attention to the despair in the lyrics. I think it was a testament of how she’s grown since 2012. Even though Electra Heart was a character she created, Marina’s gone through a lot in her career. She’s dealt with a lot of personal things in the spotlight, and it’s no doubt that she stepped back from music to deal with those things privately. So to hear “Teen Idle” so bare like that was really special. She clearly doesn’t relish in those lyrics anymore, and she doesn’t want us relishing in them either.

All in all, I would absolutely follow Marina through this tour. Her use of dance was a lovely choice, and the setlist couldn’t have been more perfect. From “I Am Not a Robot” to the unreleased track “I’m Not Hungry Anymore”, she really gave everyone something to look forward to. It was a pretty chilly night in Boston, but Marina’s high energy show made us all forget about that for a while.

by Nadia Paiva

Nadia Paiva has been a music enthusiast since she can remember. Going to shows is her main pastime. The other is being upset when she can’t go to shows. This is her first official venture into writing about music. You can follow her on Twitter.