MARINA DIAMANDIS'S MASTERY : MUSIC ESSAY

Her Music evolves with her. The music business is its own kind of man's world, and Diamandis has been navigating its waters since her 2010 debut, '' The Family Jewels, '' a boisterous collection of piano ballads, synth-pop and theatrical hip checks.

''Along with British songwriters like Lily Allen and Kate Nash, she's redefining songs about coming of age, and the aftermath, with bluntness and crafty intelligence,'' The New York Times chief pop critic, Jon Pareles, wrote just ahead of its release.

Marina Diamandis moved from London to Los Angeles during the pandemic last fall - but she has already discovered some of the city's trendiest literary emissaries..

''Even Banbitz didn't get her due,'' she said recently, scanning the shelves of West Hollywood's Book Soup for the author's '' Slow Days, Fast Company,'' a cult favorite of California-set vignettes.

''Joan Didion kind of eclipsed her.'' With a wry smirk, she added, ''There's only ever room for one woman.''

The 35-year-old singer known as Marina [Formerly Marina & The Diamonds] is fed up with this myth of scarcity on her fifth album, ''Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land.''

''I don't want to live in a man's world anymore,'' she proclaims in her sterling soprano on its first single,'' Man's World.'' The accompanying video, directed by Alexandra Gavillet, features women of various ages, sizes and ethnicities standing like placid warriors in Technicolor tunics.

Three more albums followed between 2012 and 2019 that saw Diamandis wrestling with embracing and rejecting the mandates of the industry - striving for mainstream acceptance and then pulling back, making music with the flavor of an indie artist in a major label ecosystem.

The ambitious ''Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land'' is another kind of calibration, ''The way that we treat people is linked to our connection to the planet,'' she said, while discussing its second single, the propulsive ''Purge the Poison.''

With a singsong rhythm punctuated by snare drums, Diamandis impersonates Mother Nature avenging human failures on ''Purge the Poison,'' including racism, pollution, Harvey Weinstein and the treatment of her beloved Britney Spears.

''On 'Purge,' I wasn't trying to be nice,'' Decilevo added. ''I knew it needed to be a sock in the face.''

Diamandis wrested back songwriting control of her 2015 album, ''Froot,'' which became her highest-charting album in the United States. '' 'Froot' mellowed that quite aggressive need for validation,'' she said, but it raised a fresh concern :

 ''Did that mean I don't have any ambition and I shouldn't be an artist?'' Diamandis was living in London, but she felt that she had been warmly embraced in America. She went on hiatus, pursuing everything from psychology to falconry. ''That was probably the worst period of my adult life,'' she said.

She reverted to writing solo on ''Ancient Dreams.'' which she considers her best album.

It's also her strongest political statement , and for that she partly credits this strange and terrifying past year. ''I would hope people don't hear it as preaching,'' she said. '' The pandemic allowed a lot of us to step back and look at what kind of lives we're living, and nothing feels sustainable.''

Diamandis had already noticed some pushback online to some of her positions on current issues. ''I like seeing comments like, ' She used capitalism to get where she is,' because it does make me think about my own place,'' she continued.

''But we're all allowed to challenge the system that we're in.''

The World Students Society thanks author Phoebe Reilly.