Emiliana Torrini

LADY MIDNIGHT

EMILIANA TORRINI HAD POSTERS OF LEONARD COHEN ON HER WALL AT THE AGE OF NINE. MONIQUE ROTHSTEIN IS IMPRESSED.

Emiliana Torrini speaks softly, with an accent equal part Teutonic and Mediterranean, and a pronunciation heavily tinged by her Icelandic heritage.
“I’m so sorry about the other day,” she exclaims, referring to our original interview time, which ended up being rescheduled. “I just become a bit of a fluff ball,” says the self-effacing songstress. “Sometimes I can be so organised, but others…”
I assure her that it’s fine – being a “fluff ball” is what makes this petite chanteuse so overwhelmingly endearing. Last time Torrini spoke to Time Off, she was touring Australia on the back of her sophomore album, Fisherman’s Woman, in 2005. In the intervening years, the shy singer has developed a confidence and self-awareness, one honed by seemingly endless touring with the likes of Sting and Tricky, performing ‘Gollum’s Song’ in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and working with in-demand UK producer Dan Carey on her new album, Me And Armini.
“The last record took a long time to write,” she says of the new album. “The songs didn’t take a long time, but just getting rid of the anxiety to start to write a song took a while… just to start was always so hard and self-punishing.”
This time around, Torrini took a different approach – one that was less self-destructive and less emotionally demanding.
“I decided to just let out whatever wanted to come, so this album was written over about two and a half weeks,” she explains.
She worked with longtime friend Carey, who has since worked with the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Hot Chip, and the duo decided to prepare for musical whimsicality.
“We had the microphones ready in the studio so that when we came up with ideas we could record straight away,” Torrini explains.
The album was written in Oxford over five days, Iceland for five days and in the studio over three days, and Torrini says she could not be happier with the outcome, Me And Armini.
“This record is very much a natural development from the last record,” she says when the suggestion is made that Fisherman’s Woman seems far more introspective and moody than Me And Armini. “When you do records there is such a big gap in between. It was a completely different time and in the subject matter I’m very happy… I think this record happened very much when something was changing, we just can’t figure out what it is.”
Emiliana sighs, recounting some unfounded criticisms of the newly released album.
“I’ve had a few angry people about this record,” she says. “They were like ‘I can’t believe she made this record!’ I don’t understand how anyone can demand of an artist that they like to make the same record; I was like ‘How are you making this about yourself?’,” she exclaims.
Torrini recalls some of the strange events that lead to particular tracks on the album, such as the mysterious title track.
“I was buffing Dan’s nails with this thing that makes your nails shine, and Dan was in love with it because it made his nails shine like disco balls,” she laughs. “He started getting the bass and it was very late in the night and we were drinking whiskey.”
When the record was complete, Emiliana felt that something was lacking, and decided to include one of the lost tracks from the recording sessions – and suddenly the album had a title track.
“I have no recollection of recording it… we made up a story that some old woman died and came back as a spirit, and came into me to sing this song. We don’t know who Armini is either.”
Torrini’s unfettered imagination and burgeoning quirkiness was already presenting itself at the age of nine, when the singer was convinced she would spend the rest of her life with Leonard Cohen.
“When everyone had Tom Cruise on their walls, I had Leonard Cohen. He was the man I was going to marry,” she confesses proudly.
Later, when her parents started buying the Greatest Love Songs compilations off the television in Germany, Emiliana found MTV.
“I stayed up all night recording the alternative shows because this just blew my mind. I remember staying up every night to hear Nirvana on the radio. That was when I got really into blues, and bebop, jazz, hip hop, heavy metal… everything. I knew everything about music at that time. Now, not at all. When I was younger I was far more responsive to music – now it’s like Chinese torture to me,” she laughs. “There is so much of it on the radio and it drives me mental most of the time. These über-happy characters; just people who babble on and on and on, blah blah blah… it’s useless stuff that I have nothing to do with, and I can’t use and it just drives me mad. So for me, sometimes, I just choose a record, get excited about listening to it, come home in the evening, get a glass of wine and just listen.”
While Torrini feels that her musical education didn’t start at home, she is aware that the core of who she is – and thus, her songwriting – did.
“I have a very eccentric family that I love, and I think something comes out of that on the record,” she says warmly – you can just about hear Torrini smile when she talks about her mother. “She’s just a very hyperactive person that knows the art of living to a tee. I only remember her and me being in laughing fits, you know?”
Torrini’s tone changes as she analyses the nature of her Italian father.
“I have a lot of fire, which I got from my father... I am very, very passionate and it can sometimes be misinterpreted as a temper. My dad is just this guy who found life maybe a bit too easy to live, so he found it hard to make it worth his time.
“Songwriting, for me, is a way of processing all of these relationships. It really is very much just trying to make some order in the chaos in my head, I guess.”

WHO: Emiliana Torrini
WHAT: Me And Armini (Rough Trade/Remote Control)
WHERE & WHEN: Brisbane Powerhouse Sunday Nov 16

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