Marina Diamandis has had quite the year. Under the moniker Marina & the Diamonds, 2010 has seen her become one of the most critically acclaimed pop stars in the country and her whip smart debut album The Family Jewels has gone gold. Diamandis is currently on her biggest UK tour to date and damn near sells out the Regal.

Diamandis’s debut is full of immaculately put together pop songs and it’s no surprise the same attitude is applied to her stage show. Bursting with ideas, her intriguing projections, numerous costume changes, props and sumptuous light show ice an already delicious cake. She enters the Regal’s stage dressed simply, in a fitted black dress and ends the show in glittery trousers and a cheerleader top, holding a hamburger. In between she plays each one of the tracks from the Family Jewels, with a panache and zing that most musicians will never get close to. Her musical influences are vast and disparate, with classic pop like Blondie and Kate Bush meshing together alongside PJ Harvey and Bikini Kill. Each one of her tracks is finely balanced, appearing, on the surface, to be studied bubblegum pop, but tracks like tracks like Shampain and The Outsider have a wryness in their lyrics and a quirk in their presentation that makes them so much more. There’s variety in her song writing too, with emotive ballads like I Am Not A Robot and Obsessions sitting alongside up-tempo cuts like Girls. Perhaps the tracks that sums Diamandis up the best is the one she ends her set with, Hollywood. The most immediate of her tracks, it’s half a story about a struggling Polish actress and half a comment on the US media’s attitude to women. Smart and thoughtful lyrics, packaged into brilliant pop music with a stomping chorus. It’s a wonderful way to finish her set.

All pop stars should be like Marina Diamandis. Equally charismatic and challenging, there’s no-one worthier of your musical love and devotion performing at the moment.