Fisherman's Woman

Emiliana Torrini's 2000 debut Love in the Time of Science showcased the singer's Icelandic/Italian voice in a swirl of trip-hop beats and glossy electronica skitters, sounding precisely like Björk filtered through Roland Orzabal's refined pop eardrums. Following the sonic overload that her debuted offered, Torrini's follow-up Fisherman's Woman feels like a sigh of relief. Accompanied almost exclusively by gently strummed acoustic guitars and the soft creaking of boats on a river, her cool whispers bring to mind the charming work of Nick Drake or an impossibly sunny Mazzy Star. Warmly intimate, it almost seems as though the engineers stumbled across a wood nymph with a six-string guitar sighing gently on the banks of a tumbling brook, set up their recording equipment, and then came back an hour later to hear what they had captured. Of course it takes a lot of work to sound this effortless, and producer/multi-instrumentalist Dan Carey (alias "Mr. Dan") took great pains to capture the acoustic setting, augmenting occasionally with a quiet piano or light percussion, but primarily allowing Torrini's breathy voice to meander through her straightforward melodies and childlike sentiments. Needless to say, the music is unquestionably beautiful in its simplicity and honesty; summery and warm, and casually intimate but with a real lasting quality. These are the songs that sneak into the listener's subconscious, lying in wait until the perfect spring day to surface in the form of a quiet hum or low whistle, sounding for all the world like a lullaby long forgotten or a folk song never written down.