POP

Melanie Martinez Portals (Atlantic) ★★★✩✩

IT’S ironic that Melanie Martinez first found fame aged 17 on The Voice US, where judges initially assess you on your sound alone. More than a decade on, her breathy, babygirl singing is the least striking thing about her.

She always looked unusual, but the look has become ever more cartoonish and her videos immaculately outlandish. By 2019 and her second album, K-12, she had graduated to writing, directing and starring in a full-length accompanying movie, which mixed pastel schoolgirl cutesiness with the dark and surreal.

By this point, her fanbase is in with both feet. As with Taylor Swift, they’re invited to consider her album an “era”. Martinez has built hype for her new songs by posting white chocolate eggs to a few superfans, inside which were flash drives containing song snippets.

In her reintroductory video, Martinez emerges from an egg as an alien creature with four eyes, a cat’s mouth, fairy wings and crimped ears. The surrounding forest is referenced in songs such as Leeches, with its jungle night noises beneath the plucked electric guitar, and the pretty, violent Nymphology: “Cut you off, watch you die/Just a fairy with a knife.”

Björk got there first with the extreme physical transformations and immersive nature songs. Musically, Martinez is less adventurous but a good deal more accessible. Evil has a delicious mix of sweet digitised vocals and rumbling rock guitar. Faerie Soirée skips along on restless Latin beats. Death floats through a number of intriguing stages before ending in a thundering finale. However, anyone who sees a picture of her first will find it hard not to find the songs comparatively lacking. For the complete Martinez experience, the album isn’t enough.