Track Listing

1. Nothing Brings Me Down
2. Sunny Road
3. Snow
4. Lifesaver
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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5161 in Music
• Released on: 2005-01-31
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The delicate, folksy Emiliana Torrini you hear on Fisherman's Woman might not be one you know if you heard her previous record, 1999's Love In The Time Of Science. Recorded with Roland Orzabel of Tears For Fears, it was a pleasant enough listen, but did little to distinguish this Italian-Icelandic chanteuse from the trip-hop competition. Fisherman's Woman, however, is quite different: debuting a rustic edge possibly prompted by the acclaim that met "Gollum's Song", a track that Torrini contributed to the score of Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, these tracks harness her gentle, honey-sweet vocals to finger-picked acoustic guitar, gentle wisps of piano, and the chime of xylophone.

The work of Nick Drake is a common reference point for music like this, but here it's certainly valid: shades of Pink Moon haunt the perimeter of tracks like "Lifesaver", simultaneously eerie and exquisite in its quiet beauty. The album highlight, meanwhile, comes with "Honeymoon Child" – a track written with Bill Callahan of American lo-fi institution Smog that's as enigmatic – and consequently, as strangely fascinating – as anything he's ever performed himself. --Louis Pattison

Album Description
Singer/songwriter Emiliana Torrini performs with an exquisite vocalic beauty. Fisherman's Woman, Torrini's second album, is a delicate collection of twelve ephemeral and atmospheric songs that will tiptoe into your heart. The fresh-faced singer, of Italian and Icelandic decent, has a voice akin to that other Icelandic nymph, Bjork. She has also 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".

CD Description
Emiliana Torrini's second album, FISHERMAN'S WOMAN, arrivedjust in time for the full flowering of the mid-2000s psych-folk revival (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, et al), but it clearly stands apart from the pack. Entirely devoid of theself-conscious quirkiness of so many of her contemporaries,she's closer in spirit to the likes of Sandy Denny and NickDrake. Her hushed, fragile vocal style is intimate and entrancing without ever sounding affected or precious. Subtle support from some empathetic musicians keeps the focus squarely on Torrini's ethereal voice and on the hypnotic acoustic-guitar patterns around which most of the tunes revolve. Torrini's lyrics are alternately confessional/emotional and allusive/cryptic, but the honesty of her delivery makes every song come across with an equally visceral impact.

Customer Reviews

sunny times
After the gorgeous electric landscapes of Emiliana Torrini's debut album, I was eagerly anticipating the release of new material, so when I got my hands on a promo copy of the new album, I couldn't wait to find out what direction the music had taken.

If there is only one album you buy this year, please please let it be this. Emiliana returns with the most captivating folk album of recent times, combining her delicate but powerful vocals with impossibly good melodies, perfect musical arrangements and a set of songs that place her as surely one of the best artists around.

In all honesty there is not a bad song on this album, and tracks such as "Sunnyroad", the sweet and enchanting first single, "Today Has Been OK" and the outstanding "At Least It Was" display Emiliana's talents. Title track "Fisherman's Woman" takes the listener far away from the city and time of science of her debut, and into a simple, more homely world where melancholy and sweetness are balances effortlessly to create an album that is both warming and heartbreaking.

At recent gigs she performed most of these songs and on stage in an intimate setting, the power of the music is completely engulfing, and it is with this new sound that Emiliana seems completely at home. You get the feeling that she has put everything into this album, and when you're listening to the songs that you really get to know her inside out. What is most striking about this album is its lack of pretence. It sounds so completely natural, free from the self-consciousness and artifice that colours so many other artists. A beautifully honest and human album, and as a nice surprise, even more spellbinding than her debut album.

Sunny road
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.

nothing brings her down...
I had the fortune to catch Emiliana Torrini at Spitz in London a while back, and what struck me most about the performance was not the way her playful nature defiantly shone through her shy and unassuming demeanour, but that this self-effacing banter and gentle whisper of song achieved a magical symbiosis with the natural beauty and form of her music. Fisherman's Woman, like the gig that consisted almost entirely of the album's tracklisting, is wonderfully sublime and quite possible the most unpretentious thing you'll ever hear; an album, written and performed by a musician, purely for music's sake, and that, in this day and age, is surely a rare thing.