It's forty-five minutes to showtime and Emiliana Torrini is feeling nervous. "It always makes me ill," she confides, "Sometimes I'm physically sick before I go on stage." The thought of playing London's Shepherds Bush Empire later this month already terrifies her, with two weeks still to go. "It's too big!" she exclaims. I assure her she'll be fine and tell her how much I enjoyed her show at the Komedia back in April. "Did you know that I cried to myself after that show?" she says, as the truth dawns on me that Emiliana is clearly her own biggest critic. (The gig had been faultless - you could have heard a pin drop in the hall). She shouldn't worry so much. After support from the Icelandic contingent of Adem - the missing link between Good Morning Captain and Coldplay (!) - and Nix Noltes (hey, I'm keeping quiet, I don't want to go to "music jail"), she takes to the stage and launches into Today Has Been Okay, my favourite track off her current album. It's a little weird in the Concorde, half the audience are sat on the floor, the remainder standing politely around them - I perch myself atop the windowsill by the side of the stage. "If people start talking I'll tell them to shut the f*** up," she'd said to me earlier. Thankfully the atmosphere is quiet and respectful, allowing Emiliana's quiet songs to fill the room. It's all very lovely, and of course there's the added bonus of her amusing ad-libs and anecdotes in between songs. Emiliana loves Brighton, her newly adopted home, and Brighton should love her too - she really is "several drops of frosty wonderful" as my American buddy Sean would say.
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