Fishermans Woman

Emiliana Torrini | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 26, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rough Trade Us
• ASIN: B000XFZSZO
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,107 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Nothing Brings Me Down

2. Sunny Road

3. Snow

4. Life Saver

5. Honeymoon Child

6. Today Has Been OK

7. Next Time Around

8. Heartstopper

9. At Least It Was

10. Fisherman's Woman

11. Thinking Out Loud

12. Serenade

Editorial Reviews

Entertainment Weekly

a finely etched sound that plays sparkling guitar and piano against grief-laced lyrics.

Woman's charm, the Icelandic-Italian singer's crystalline voice, her bewitching phrasing--her mouth seems to curl gently around the words. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

"Home alone and happy / Nothing brings me down" So opens Emiliana Torrini’s second album, a soft-yet-searing collection of twelve intimate and atmospheric songs that will whisper their way into your bloodstream. Back in 1999, when the singer released the critically acclaimed Love In The Time Of Science, Emiliana came out with a gorgeous, electronic trippoppin’ vision of endless summer and moonlit nights out. Following her departure from One Little Indian, there’s a new introspection, closer to Nick Drake or Jolie Holland than Portishead or Goldfrapp. The 27-year-old singer and writer has nonetheless been busy since Love In The Time Of Science. She moved to Brighton, joined the cast of Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers to perform the enchanting ‘Gollum Song’ wrote and toured with Thievery Corporation, and wrote a Number One Hit for Kylie Minogue in the shape of huge-selling pop smash "Slow." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Emiliana Torrini's Most Accomplished Yet (4.5), April 28, 2005

By 

Juan Mobili (Valley Cottage, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fishermans Woman (Audio CD)

Emiliana Torrini emerged around 1999, at least in the US and most of Europe, heralded as a voice belonging to Bjork's coven, a comparison I always found more related to their common homeland, Iceland, than a deeply strong sisterhood of sound.

Although 'Love In The Time Of Science" did bring to mind some of Bjork's occasional lullaby-like phrasings, and the album's arrangements did rely on subtle and timely Electronica, Torrini was already promising to be her own person, someone with something genuine and personal to say.

"Fisherman's Woman," her new album, is that promise fulfilled. Her voice, in this new album, is more confident, more decisive while never raising beyond a tender hush, a perfect tone to deliver lyrics that are at once revelatory, thoughtful and yet innocent and uncomplicated.

The thought that came to mind -please allow an unexpected metaphor here- is that the songs follow each other like geese migrating toward warmth, each of them distinct yet flying at the same altitude and with a common destination.

But don't let the sweetness of these tunes confuse you about the strength of their confessional power. Whether it is the short title song, the painful and beautiful "Today Has Been OK," or the gorgeous melody of the album's first single, "Sunnyroad," Emiliana weaves images into stories that you may feel she's only singing to you.

Equally worthy of recognition are the melodies and the band, particularly Dan Carey -who plays some unassumingly beautiful and intelligent guitar, as well as bass and pedal steel- and the subtle piano of Julian Joseph. This and the intimacy that Emiliana's voice is capable of, also shows decisively in "Snow," and "Lifesaver" with its bewitching cadence and the brilliant sample that sounds like the creaking wood of a boat swaying.

If you come to Torrini for the first time, I can't imagine you not finding enough to remain near, for repeated listenings. And if you were already touched by Emiliana's earlier releases, I predict that you will be elated with this album. She has become her own self yet more deeply, an old skin has shed and made space for a new one.

This is a brilliant album, confirming a voice and a sound that has much more offer to new singers than it owes to the ones that precede her.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful "Woman", April 26, 2005

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fishermans Woman (Audio CD)

Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini captured the audience's ears with the exquisite "Gollum's Song" in the second "Lord of the Rings" movie, then with her U.S. debut "Love in the Time of Science." Now her long-awaited fourth album, "Fisherman's Woman" has come -- and it was worth the wait.

In "Love in the Time of Science," the sound was exotic trip-hop. This time around, Torrini opts for a more organic sound. For instance, the downtempo "Lifesaver" sounds like it was recorded in a boat -- there are wooden creaks just under Torrini's gentle acoustic guitar and wistful vocals, as if she were sitting in the middle of a lake when she recorded it.

That same feeling sticks to the other songs on the album. Torrini seems to be thinking about loss, but her songs are never really quite tragic: the opener "Nothing Brings Me Down" is a good example, with its stripped-down guitar-and-piano sound, followed by the exquisite "Sunny Road," and ending with the entrancingly dark "Serenade."

It's a pretty drastic thing to change your sound after a successful first album. But Torrini not only does it, she succeeds again. The same sense of eerie romance that was in "Love in the Time of Science" is in "Fisherman's Woman" as well, but it's more intimate. And sad. As beautiful as Torrini's trip-hop is, her acoustic ballads are just as lovely.

Don't expect programming. No trip-hop. Torrini opts for a more organic sound this time around, mainly using guitar for the instrumentation. A few other things pop up -- sound samples, piano -- but guitar is the heart and soul of the music. And Torrini's voice doesn't lose any of its beauty because of the lack of production. "And it's funny how your cause/makes no sense at all," she sings in "Lifesaver." For someone so sad, she sounds almost playful.

With her last album, Emiliana Torrini showed that she was a pop singer to watch. In the intimate "Fisherman's Woman," she proves that her fourth effort was worth the wait.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sounds of saddness, August 27, 2005

By 

Margret Thordardottir (Iceland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fishermans Woman (Audio CD)

I've liked the work of Emiliana Torrini since she first came onto the music scene here in Iceland. She has always managed to stay fresh and grounded through out her career.

I just wanted to point out, that many people wrote in their reviews that she had changed from being bright and "the sense of endless summers" into someone so sorrowfull. Well, the reason is, her boyfriend died very suddenly and this album is sort of a memory of him. I don't know when he died, but I read a interview she gave here in Iceland and there she talked about how music helped her. I think that this album is the greatest gift she could give in his honor.