It has been a nice sunny day for a change. I had to go up town this morning to get some provisions, and also bought a couple of plants on my way back home which I put in a bowl of water for a good soak before potting them out this evening. Then I sat in my chair outside the back door and basked in the April sunshine watching the birds flying to and fro at the neighbour’s bird table. The sound of music floated from my CD player in the kitchen. It was an album from 2005 called Fisherman’s Woman by an Icelandic singer called Emiliana Torrini. If you are wondering how someone from Iceland has a surname like Torrini, it is because her father came from Naples. I bought this album a couple of years ago and I think I have only played it once previously. I don’t think I was very impressed on first listen, but today it clicked with me.
The gentle acoustic guitar and her wistful voice just seemed perfect for the mood I was in, or maybe it was the music that created the mood. All the songs apart from two were written by Emiliana and Dan Carey who also produced the album. He has produced many hit albums over the last twenty years or so for artists such as Kylie Minogue, Wet Leg, Fontaines D.C. Franz Ferdinand, Hot Chip and many others. He is also a very talented multi-instrumentalist and achieves a perfect balance between the under-stated playing and the vocals. Emiliana’s voice reminds me of Bjork which isn’t surprising, but I don’t think she is deliberately copying Bjork, maybe all women from Iceland sound like this when they sing in English.
I won’t go through every song because I’m not sure what they are all about. The lyrics seem very subjective and personal to the singer, often like a stream of consciousness. They create a very warm emotion in the listener though. I noticed that Honeymoon Child is written by Bill Callahan whose work I have admired for a few years now. His quirky lyrics are spotted immediately with such lines as ‘Gathering like ravens on a rusty scythe’. A song I particularly enjoyed is Next Time Around because I know this song. It was written by the wonderful Sandy Denny who I have often mentioned before on this blog page. I have Sandy’s version on a double album called I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn. Reading the lyrics today it suddenly dawned on me that the song is about Sandy’s tragic boyfriend from the mid-1960s Jackson C. Frank. That is because of references to the city of Buffalo where he came from and allusions to lyrics from songs of Jackson’s. It shows that Sandy was still remembering Jackson years after they split up. Emiliana’s own songs also seem to be about lost loves and waiting for someone. This is especially true of the title song Fisherman’s Woman where she waits for someone, just like Anna Ingunn’s mom. I haven’t got a clue who Anna Ingunn is though. I think my favourite song of all is Today Has Been OK, so I have shared a video of Emiliana singing that song live below to give you an idea of her.
After Emiliana’s music finished I enjoyed an album by Devendra Banhart which I might tell you about another day. I also heard In Gardens Where We Feel Secure by Virginia Astley, an album I never get tired of hearing. Even the birds in the trees seemed to enjoy that one. Eventually clouds floated across the sky, it got a bit chilly, and I came indoors, but it had been a nice afternoon.
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