Five years on from Me And Armini, Emiliana Torrini emerges out of the Icelandic landscape with new offering, Tookah. The album title is an invented word to describe the inner balance of good and bad, a search for the essence of what you are before all of life’s baggage gets on top of you.
The nine songs within reflect an inner search that’s likely to have been influenced by new motherhood; they’re gently exploratory and pare back Torrini’s sound to reach a sophisticated simplicity. The collection is once again blessed with the crisp production of co-songwriter, Dan Carey. Electro touches add tiny sparks to an insular work that is best summarized by the lovely second track, Caterpillar, with its clipped handclaps and unfurling guitars.
There’s nothing as immediately accessible as Jungle Drum (cannily used as a lure inspired by Iceland’s Tourism campaign), but the album reaches a peak with the excellent electro-pop thrill of Speed Of Dark. While you can’t help but pine for something else that hits the mark as directly as the album’s single, the more subtle pleasures of Tookah slowly reveal themselves in time.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: Speed of Dark
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In A Word: Instinctive
