emiliana

I saw Emiliana Torrini play last night at NASA, Reykjavík's downtown venue for music shows. I had picked up her new album, Fisherman's Woman, on the way to Denmark last weekend. She is half Italian, half Icelandic, and 100% stunning. You may know her as the singer for the finale song of the Two Towers movie. She also sang with Thievery Corporation - check out the opening and closing tracks on The Richest Man in Babylon (was already one of my favorite albums of the last few years, but I just figured out it was Emiliana singing!). She wrote a song for Kylie Minogue, too.

She had the crowd laughing throughout the night, as before almost every song she launched into stories about touring and playing all kinds of places, including one place in Texas where most people were going about eating their dinner while she was doing an "encore" that only a handful of people had clapped for. While she was singing the encore, she could hear forks and knives clinking on plates.

There was no fork-and-knife noise at NASA last night, though, and not only because they don't serve dinner. The crowd was wowed and quietly appreciative, erupting into joyful applause at the end of each song. Emiliana sings with a voice that's at the same time rich and almost childlike. Her songs on the new album are all acoustic, with two acoustic guitars and occasional percussion backup. When singing she closes her eyes and rolls her head back in an almost Björkian reverie. Her songs are reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, and she counts Tom Waits as a big influence. My favorite from the show was "Sunny Road," a tender and wistful song that's been getting good airplay here.

She's playing a sold-out 4-date tour of Iceland over the next several days, and then on to Europe. Góða ferð, Emiliana!