Maria Mena must save a small fortune in therapy bills. Instead of paying out to bare her soul to a psychoanalyst she writes pop songs instead and this has proven to be a very lucrative sideline indeed.
By the age of 15 she had already earned her first platinum record in her native country of Norway (she was born in Oslo in 1996). This success was largely generated by a tearjerker she wrote when she was just 13 (My Lullaby) ,a heartfelt song inspired by feelings of guilt and confusion after the divorce of her parents.
Subsequent albums have clocked up impressive sales throughout Europe and Cause And Effect is her fifth album It was originally released in Norway in September 2008 and is now unleashed on the UK market with big label backing and production values to match.
Ten years on from her debut, the wounds of her problematic childhood may not be so raw but it is evident that the psychological scars remain.
Maria Mena has admitted that she writes songs as a cathartic exercise to try to gain some wisdom and perspective. She may not necessarily be out to apportion blame but when the title song sings of "cheating fathers" and "mother's weekend lovers and their alcoholic breaths" it is clear that she is not one to mince words either.
The ten songs chart self destructive tendencies and the damaging impact these have on her self esteem and love life. There are unambiguous details of her eating disorders (bulimia and anorexia) and she makes no attempt to gloss over the extremities of her angst. In Where Were You she likens the quest for true love to a treadmill. In Eyesore she pleads "I want out from under this confining skin that I so reluctantly live in" while Self-Fulfilling Prophesy contains the tortured line "self hatred grows in me like cancer".
All these true life confessions could have made for a very maudlin and highly depressing listening experience but fortunately this is not the case. Instead, the purity of Maria Mena's voice together with the upbeat (occasionally OTT) arrangements make her honest and hard-edged songs sound positively jaunty.
On the opening track (Power Trip Ballad) a full orchestra and children's choir conspire to help Maria drown out her sadness but it is the simplicity of the single, All This Time, which best captures this spirit of the album. This catchy 'pick-me-up song' carries the affirmative message that determination and a push at the right time is sometimes all you need to get by.
The moral may be banal, but it is delivered with such sincerity even the hardest of hearts will melt.
