Emilíana Torrini
Me And Armini
Release Date: Sep 9, 2008
Genre(s): Rock, Pop, Alternative
Record label: Rough Trade
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Album Review: Me And Armini by Emilíana Torrini
Great, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 8.7/10
Lord of the Rings singer makes Sunday-morning musicA diva/chanteuse somewhere between the bad-girl anti-heroics of Lily Allen and the Sunday morning adulthood of Norah Jones, Emiliana Torrini sings with the inquisitiveness of fellow Icelander Björk. On Me and Armini, Torrini’s sixth album (third international), her songs are set into glittering poptronics by collaborator Dan Carey, with whom Torrini once co-wrote and co-produced songs for Kylie Minogue. The two aren’t afraid to aim for absolute hookiness.
Based on rating 8/10
Emiliana Torrini revisits her relationship with producer Dan Carney on Me and Armini, which mixes fingerplucked folk with touches of jazz, dancehall, electronica, and pop. Splitting the difference between the intimate acoustics of 2005's Fisherman's Woman and the trip-hop experiments of Love in the Time of Science, Me and Armini finds room for Torrini to flex all of her musical muscles. She's a sultry mistress during "Gun," where she peppers the verses with blasts of hot breath cloaked in echo.
Based on rating 7.0/10
Emiliana Torrini and reggae aren’t exactly synonymous with each other. But having dabbled in a bevy of musical modes, manners and genres throughout her fourteen-year career, Icelandic/Italian beauty Emiliana Torrini has never been one to shy away from shifting gears, so to speak. From the electro-pop hit “Slow” that Torrini and oft-collaborator/producer Dan Carey penned for a certain Kylie Minogue to the windy mountain spires and classically inclined landscapes of “Gollum’s Song” (from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack), Torrini has always excelled at diversifying her sound.
Based on rating 3/5
Emiliana Torrini has always been something of a stylistic magpie, but knowing that is no preparation for the kaleidoscope of sounds on her third album. The title track is a scatty little attempt at dub that proves strangely affecting, while Gun draws on dirty psych-garage to conjure up a sordidly seductive mood. Big Jumps, in which Torrini echoes the "doo, do-doo" chorus of Lou Reed's backup girls walking on the wild side, is exhilarating, twisty sort-of folk.