Rough Trade
Emiliana Torrini : Fisherman's Woman (ICE/UK,2004)****° (classic)
It’s really weird how, for me reality often seems to become harder and harsher and more inhumane every day, in a more and more politically governed society, while there also is first of all an increasing number of creativity from ordinary people with a true humane aspect, and amazingly too, there’s also more true gentleness in music, like with Emiliana Torrini, a music which leaves self-concerned melancholy behind, keeps an open vision, and spreads a positive energy wherever it can. It’s like the beauty of an inside philosophy after pain, that wins, more than those victimized who prefer to reflect those feelings of lost moments of being most important (who rarely if ever transcend their extreme perspective). Gentleness is not necessarily naïve and over-protected. Being ready to be like this, with an adult vision, really gives this society exactly what it needs, like in the voice and visions of Emiliana Torrini. We hear a very intimate sparse sound of voice and guitar, and neat minimal accompaniment. The voice carries all music attention away, so much so that one hardly notices how it is so well textured and that it brings even more life to it. A detail, a feather light accordion, was immediately noticed on “Lifesaver”. Further, all kinds of guitars, some percussion and a few other instruments are nothing but the perfect stimulation of the underlying loveliness. Only the short “Fisherman’s Woman” is lead by piano instead of guitars and textured sounds.
Emiliana Torrini is half Icelandic, half Italian. She grew up in Iceland and spent her teen summers in Germany. Later she moved to Brixton, spend some time in America. She “wanted to move to India, learn the classical techniques there, then move to Bulgaria, be a gypsy, and learn the techniques, and keep moving and learning new ways of singing” – but instead she came to England and made this record, which is in fact her third album if you count her modestly made earlier song collection (partly triphop?) albums too. I noticed more far North artists have this cold-is-skin-and-warm-is-the-heart gentle character. Emiliana shows even more, the world-is-my-perspective type of inspired strength to it, making her music immediately reflective for a wider audience, to be able to touch almost anyone’s heart from the first note to the last.
