Photo: WENN.com
Emiliana Torrini is no shrinking violet. The Icelandic-Italian musician effortlessly engages her audience with her offbeat humour and an easygoing, natural energy and seems not to care less whether her ideas and her music will please us. Luckily they do please Gigwise, very much.
Following the country-based, sincere Island Lines, Emiliana bounds into view, in colourful dress and colourful mood. Somewhere between Bjork and Martha Wainwright, her vocals soar gracefully over the sound of her big-haired band and her songs are broken up with entertaining explanations of how particular ones came about. The charming Icelandic lilt to her accent adds intrigue to her lyrics and we learn that the friend for whom she wrote a song was the only friend who failed to call to ask if it was about her.
Some of her songs are serious and gentle (this is the girl who sang the eerie Gollum Song on Lord of the Rings), while others (Jungle Drum) are unashamedly upbeat and catchy and make the sleepy, too-restrained audience looks as though it would consider shaking its hips and getting down to the beat if it didn’t consist predominantly of coolly self-conscious art student types. The contrary, wistful Sunnyroad could compete with any folk legend’s repertoire, while Big Jumps is a truly original love ditty with some clever lyrics. Gun is an eerie, guitar-heavy song of lament for an adolescent gone off the tracks. The delicious Heartstopper single quite literally does what it says on the tin, stealing our collective breath away in the process.
Torrini herself is intensely likeable, eccentric, vivacious and funny, but her ability to co-write words that match its warmth would carry the show regardless of the personality that fronts it. We are transfixed throughout, the kind of audience that sighs if any movement around us threatens to destroy the spell.
She complains about journalists and their tendency to interpret songs and get it wrong – one song was penned about her boyfriend’s brother ended up being cited after her previous gig as being a song about sex (which perhaps didn’t go down too well). Towards the front of the stage, a girl loses her Russian hat and Torrini urges the audience to return it to her.
Time passes too quickly in a satisfying blur of beautiful song after beautiful song before Torrini disappears as mystically as she appeared, her band a steady, rhythmic backdrop to an immensely talented songstress. As Torrini proclaims half way through the gig, she has ‘lots of songs about happiness’. Her happiness is well communicated and totally infectious, and on leaving the small venue the world outside seems more than a little less grim. A feeling of goodwill prevails and the Russian hat is happily reclaimed by its owner.
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