Emiliana Torrini is the progeny of an Italian father and Icelandic mother, she made a few albums when she was young that only saw release in Iceland, but with her widely released Love In The Time Of Science she gained a wider audience in Europe. The album rode the last vestiges of an electronic trip-hop sound which has inevitably dated it despite some excellent songcraft, her second widely released full-length Fisherman’s Woman was a focused album of minimal folk instrumentation and her exquisite jazz inflected vocals. She worked closely with multi-instrumentalist Dan Carey on Fisherman’s Woman and since then Torrini has become godmother to his children, and what really shows through on that album and this new one is how well suited they are together, comfortable to explore any avenues that they encounter, and make something worthwhile out of it. Turns in co-writing Kylie Minogue single ‘Slow’, and lending her vocals to a song for the Lord Of The Rings films, are other notable, and slightly surprising, facts about this lady.

There’s a murky undertone to a lot of the tracks on this album, from stalker-ish lyrics ('Me And Armini'), to cynical and sardonic perspectives ('Ha Ha', 'Heard It All Before'), to menacingly sexy ('Gun'), modern day narratives that reflect the darkness of obsession, lust and heartbreak. But then there is ‘Big Jumps’ and ‘Jungle Drum’, both emanate an exuberant skewed positivity, and a few others in the reflective, laid back, optimistic style she is so good at, which dispels some of the gloom. So it’s like a mix of two different styles of songwriting, the more experimental and dark side (7 tracks), against the more traditional one (5), one or two tracks are similar to her Fisherman’s Woman stuff, the sound of this album harks back to Love In The Time Of Science in the sense that the production is built up around her voice, but with that album the sound dominated Torrini, whereas with this album it’s better integrated.

She has managed to shrug off any coffee table pigeon-holes here, things like the echo-heavy atmosphere and minimal electric guitar on ‘Gun’, the two reggae inspired tracks (‘Me And Armini’, ‘Heard It All Before’) and the rhythmic ‘Jungle Drum’ shake up the formula, pushing out the speakers and grabbing the listener by the ears. Which leaves some space for her to craft those excellent folk styled poppy numbers, with the relatively low amount keeping those songs sounding fresh.

But there’s definitely a strange flow, you often feel slightly confused about how long the album has been on for, at one moment its moving along nicely, and then suddenly you’re in the middle of a 5 or 6 minute song wondering when it’s going to end, not that the song is boring or too long, just the contrast is unexpected. It’s interesting to see this album in the context of her previous one, Fisherman’s Woman was intensely focused in theme and sound, playing out a story, whereas Me And Armini is a wide spread of ideas, with not much of a central story. The craft and ability Torrini and Carey put into these songs makes the album an enjoyably scattershot affair. 75%

Emiliana Torrini on MySpace