Rough Trade Us
2008
Me And Armini
About This Album
Emiliana Torrini reprises her relationship with producer/songwriter Dan Carney on Me and Armini, which mixes fingerplucked folk with elements of jazz, dancehall, electronica, and summery pop. Splitting the difference between the intimate acoustics of 2005's Fisherman's Woman and the trip-hop experiments on Love in the Time of Science, Me and Armini finds room for Torrini to flex all of her muscles. She's a sultry mistress on "Gun," peppering the verses with blasts of hot breath cloaked in echo. It's a surprisingly sexy performance -- almost feline, not unlike something by the Kills -- with a muted guitar riff that threatens to explode into noisy catharsis but stubbornly keeps its composure. Elsewhere, Torrini tones down the heat in favor of winsome innocence, mimicking a percussive instrument on "Jungle Drum" and filling "Big Jumps" with strings of endearing doop-de-doop vocals and a commercial pop chorus. Several songs also cement her musical connection to Björk -- an easy link to make, perhaps, given the women's shared Icelandic heritage, but a factual one nevertheless -- and tunes like "Birds" and "Heard It All Before" show that both singers employ similar vocal ticks.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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