Emiliana Torrini

If someone asked you in 2023 which musicians come to mind when you think of Iceland, who would you name? You'd surely think first of Björk and Sigur Rós; the more attentive among you might mention the late Jóhann Jóhannsson or the freshly Oscar-winning Hildur Guðnadóttir, not to mention a black-metal scene that has risen to the status of a genuine school of thought. Looking closer, the land of ice and fire has been an incredible breeding ground for talent over the past twenty-five years, artists who have gone on to leave an indelible mark on independent music worldwide (and beyond). Rightfully part of this creative melting pot is an artist who has stood well apart from the chatter of the leading circuits, yet has managed to become an authoritative voice (when not an outright hitmaker) in the realm of pop delicacies. And to think her story didn't start out with the slightest hint of international ambition...

Of course, at first glance the name of the artist in question doesn't seem to have much to do with the latitudes we're examining. Born to an Icelandic mother and an Italian father, Emiliana Torrini grew up in a small town near Reykjavik and showed a precious vocal talent from the very start, along with an omnivorous curiosity that led her to range from the jazz standards performed by her grandfather to the thrilling pop sounds she discovered through MTV. At just seven years old she joined a choir in the capital as a soprano, and by fifteen she had begun attending the Conservatory, aiming to become an opera singer.

The country is small, and the career of the very young singer soon took flight. It was only 1994 when, at 17, she became famous by winning a talent contest for young singers with her rendition of "I Will Survive". From then on, events unfolded in rapid succession.

In a careful scouting operation aimed at satisfying a growing hunger for sounds from Iceland, the name Emiliana Torrini reached the ever-attentive ears of Derek Birkett, founder of One Little Indian (the label behind Björk and Sigur Rós, fresh off their debut and newly distributed internationally), who spotted in her irrepressible urge to sing the vehicle for a genuinely compelling pop persona. No sooner said than done: it's 1999, and the wandering dreams of a twenty-one-year-old on the verge of turning twenty-two converge on the banks of the Thames, home to Birkett's label and, at the time, a bustling crossroads of the most cutting-edge pop trends. In this London, experienced with disenchantment but also with all the eager curiosity of a young adult, Emiliana Torrini and a thoroughly impressive entourage (with none other than Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears overseeing production) deliver the debut - at least in terms of original songwriting - of a performer who suddenly found herself picking up a pen and becoming an author. In this phase of life that dissolves the boundaries between innocence and mischief, unease and lightheartedness, the resulting album ends up defining an entire pop season.

With a title that recalls Gabriel García Márquez's 1985 masterpiece, "Love In The Time Of Science" arrives at a moment when the 90s were drawing to a close, leaving behind a bittersweet "atmosphere" that permeated much of the music coming out of Europe. Those were the years when the foundations of trip-hop were being laid, an ambivalent music that consolidated into more elegant, rarefied forms, capable of expressing a fascinating yet ambivalent mix that moves from existential unease into melancholy. Bordering on industrial music, somewhere between hints of Mezzanine by Massive Attack and the noir textures of Portishead, the Bristol sound was discovered in light of a pop potential that exploited rhythmic obsessiveness and the narcotic character of bass lines for its own ends. Morcheeba, Hooverphonic, even Moloko before their breakthrough with the "Sing It Back" remix: the path paved by mother figure Neneh Cherry and Robert Del Naja had already found its followers, ready to carve out their own space and channel the genre's structures into the most disparate hybrids.

Judging by the songwriter's own recollections, Emiliana Torrini's third album didn't necessarily set out with these premises in mind. In fact, she showed a certain reluctance toward the repeated suggestions of those who wanted her to make a record fully aligned with the dictates of trip-hop. And yet, however much one wants to present the album as a collection of pop songs, it inevitably ends up shaped by the creative climate it belongs to - indeed, it becomes one of its most dazzling examples. The album comes across as a collection that is as immediate and appealing as it is capable of absorbing the most disparate influences and giving them back in the image of a young woman curious about the world, a vision built around absolute singularity (lyrical, but ultimately also sonic) as its guiding principle. Thoughtful and reflective, yet never forgetting a certain sunniness that would distinguish the Icelandic musician's entire career, this true debut manages to capture the feelings of an entire generation of listeners, distilling their perceptions into a warm, all-embracing hug.

Far from a cookie-cutter record, then - if anything, the work presents itself as an alternative version of the many teen-pop starlets launched with mixed success in those years. Despite production methods that might have suggested a chase for the upper reaches of the charts, the whole process instead proves respectful of the songwriter's personality, with a top-notch team (besides Orzabal, there's Eg White, veteran sound engineer Mark O'Donoughue, Siggi Baldursson, drummer of the disbanded Sugarcubes, and even a pre-debut Jóhann Jóhannsson) that manages to turn the singer's utter inexperience as a writer to its advantage, bringing out all her freshness, full of delicate light and shade and a sensual ambiguity.

All these qualities are already condensed in the opening "To Be Free", whose quiet warmth sets the album in motion. This track brings together sounds and flavors ranging from trip-hop to electro-pop, right up to more conventional pop-rock, all perfectly blended by the voice of the Icelandic singer, who enriches the song with low, never intrusive tones. The music is lively, candid, sparkling, effervescent without overdoing it; the track feels reflective but never drowsy. In short, it sounds like a more subdued, yet at the same time more structured, version of many artists who were topping the charts with similar material at the time.

Following in the footsteps of the previous track comes the ballad "Wednesday's Child", which takes on a bittersweet, almost bitter tone, marked by a more sustained rhythmic pulse, paradoxically almost uptempo. By working through contrasts, moving nimbly between timbres while singing of pain and depression, Torrini perfectly captures the force that opposing feelings can take on, the absoluteness that defines them. Young, yes, but her self-awareness is such that, deep down, the light at the end of the tunnel is clearly visible: as the lyrics put it, "Ain't gonna die". Similar observations apply to "Baby Blue", a track that again takes the shape of a ballad, but with a different sonic weight. In its quieter moments, the song takes on jazz tones (clear echoes of her training and the two cover albums), turning docile and languid, before the choral explosions of the chorus, where voice, strings and guitar open up to give the track a truly surprising airiness, only to return to stillness where just a few elements hold up the instrumental structure. This structural complexity is skillfully handled and everything feels fully justified, supported too by lyrical subject matter that shows no mercy to anyone, least of all to the singer herself. Steering clear of gothic temptations and out-of-place eschatological references, the song manages to evoke the pain of a miscarriage along with the sense of loss and grief that such a tragedy brings, weighing every word with the necessary care.

With the same ease of someone who knows she has nothing to lose, Emiliana and her team lay down "Dead Things", one of the most powerful songs on the record, once again built on a fascinating interpretive ambiguity that loads it with multiple meanings. Caught between acceptance and refusal, escapism and fatalism ("bad things, sad things, dead things have to happen"), the song drifts through faint synth murmurs, a low-impact drum machine, and noisy industrial blasts, dissonant yet perfectly at home in the context. Echoes of Björk? Possibly: there are indeed nods to "Post" in particular, but this is the only moment that recalls her extraordinary fellow countrywoman - the rush to compare the two, which led many to view Torrini as an imitator of her far more famous colleague (causing her no small amount of grief), can safely end right here.

The sunnier side fully blossoms in a pair of more conventional tracks that are nonetheless far from flat or predictable, not least because they're tailored precisely to the singer's personality. While "Unemployed In Summertime" moves with a supple grace, driven by pulsing bass notes and a laid-back electronic groove, "Easy" plays the guitar-driven pop-rock card, embellished with bright synth flourishes. Entrusted to the freshness of a twenty-one-year-old fully aware of her place in the world ("I've only just turned 21, I'll be OK") and of her own desires ("It's not an accident, you meant to touch me, and that's exactly why I'm here"), the two songs are a clear example of pop that never trivializes its performer's voice, but rather celebrates her poetic sensibility and youthful fervor. Ultimately, it's proof of how music can be both accessible and deeply personal - songs that may lack a fully defined authorial voice, but possess a rare quality all the same: a great melody.

Then comes one of the album's most representative tracks: "Fingertips". Here the band dive headlong into trip-hop territory: cadenced rhythmic lashes counterbalance Emiliana's vocalizations and the sweetness of her singing, amid scratches, samples of speeding trains and various background sounds. Despite a fairly intricate sonic stratification, the track flows candidly, emotional and full of colour, in full pantheistic communion with the earth and its most tactile aspects. The writing clearly shows a will to push further, to move beyond convention (however continuously reshaped it may be), with results of real merit. "Telepathy" unfurls with the same intent, a dazzling epic penned by the aforementioned Jóhannsson: here the Icelandic singer's voice, like a modern-day Shirley Bassey, shows off its range and power, reaching heights of an old-school Bond-like interpretation, while in terms of composition the orchestral/instrumental element takes over from the electronic one, offering a kind of rough, muscular pop song that nonetheless manages to calm its own swells, granting more dreamlike interludes.

As the album draws to a close, the moods settle into sweet, reassuring tones, though played out over a lyricism that's anything but accommodating, as if wanting to both comfort and strike the listener on the way to the final farewell. The charging roll of percussion in "Tuna Fish" clashes with the barely-whispered vocals, which cloak the song's despondent situationism ("I am lying in my bed watching the spider eat the fly, I say 'How is that its breakfast even for you'") in disarming sincerity. "Summerbreeze" is a faint, dreamy guitar-and-voice lullaby, built entirely around a sense of absence and abandonment that not even Iceland's brief summer can fully dispel. The beautiful, cathartic minute of quiet that is "Sea People" fittingly closes out a final triptych in which peace of mind and the force of unrestrained feeling find their well-earned place at the end.

All things considered, "Love In The Time Of Science" doesn't fit neatly into the musical landscape of its era: it's not trip-hop enough to be lumped in with the Bristol Sound, not straightforward enough to slot into any late-millennium pop trend, nor is it so devoted to sophistication that it becomes a forbidden object reserved for connoisseurs only. This album's identity is entirely its own, and it lies in the rare ability to draw skillfully from a range of inspirations, getting the most out of a singular voice and several artistic minds, and turning out a collection of songs of disarming yet troubled sweetness.

Everything and its opposite, "Love In The Time Of Science" seems to represent an era while evading any clear-cut categorization; in its own way, it's the mirror of a time as full of doubt as the years straddling the old and new millennium were. What is certain is that, musically, it can only be remembered as a collection of vivid, new, fresh songs brimming with sonic ideas: which, after all, is what the essence of the best pop should always be.

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12/03/2023