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Marina AllenMarina Allen: Superreality – videoFrom Los Angeles, USMarina Allen wears songwriterly classicism with incredible lightness: there are tinges of Brill Building doyennes such as Laura Nyro to her conversational piano playing and lilting voice; of west coast wonder to her open-hearted and unflinching lyricism. Her second album, 2022’s gorgeous Centrifics, was produced by Cass McCombs and Weyes Blood collaborator Chris Cohen, and represented Allen daring herself to say “yes” to being honest with herself, to write…

Being a burgeoning pop star is a thorny business. In 2019, when she released her debut album 2nd, New York’s Grace Ives was barely working within the confines of the music industry: she had made the album on a Roland MC-505 that she bought after seeing MIA use one; it was released on the experimental indie label Dots Per Inch, best known for bizarro pop acts such as Lily & Horn Horse and Lucy. In that world, everyone is friends, and people put out records for the love of it. So when Ives began shopping her second…