Recording information: Mr Dan's.

Prolific Icelandic singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini writes spare, unashamedly confessional pop songs with clever lyrics and a wistfully dejected but never morose outlook on life. Her sixth full-length and third internationally distributed release, ME AND ARMINI, reconciles the divergent musical directions of her previous work, which tended sometimes towards reflective folk rock and sometimes towards electronic minimalism. Torrini's vocalizing recalls Bjork at both her most mannered and her most accessible, and her instrumental accompaniment combines hushed acoustic fingerpicking with languid electronic soundscapes.

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. Elsewhere, Torrini's material evokes the jazzy cadence of Inara George or even the reggae-tinged swagger of Lily Allen, particularly on the album's breezy title track. Yet comparisons to other artists don't quite do Emiliana Torrini justice, as she's carved out her own sonic space over the course of several albums. With its wide array of genres -- all executed with earnestness and confidence -- Me and Armini emerges as an album suitable for bookworms and beach bunnies, homebodies and world travelers, dancers and wallflowers. Highly recommended. ~ Andrew Leahey