Torres- Sprinter

Torres' self-titled debut, released at the start of 2013, announced Mackenzie Scott as one of the breakout songwriters of the decade. The stock phrase is "confessional singer-songwriter", but the then 22 year-old's songs were sophisticated and three dimensional enough that she'd already outgrown that term.

Scott's improved songcraft and her experiences since Torres give Sprinter a character the first album didn't really hint at, and couldn't have, as it is the product of two years' worth of emotional upheaval that included personal betrayals and a redefinition of her religious faith. It starts at its most intense with "Strange Hellos", which recalls Nirvana, and I mean that reverently, not reductively; here, Scott channels Cobain better than anyone else I've ever heard as she excoriates a former friend. The song casts a shadow long enough to obscure the rest of the album, at least at first. Other highlights "Ferris Wheel" and "The Exchange" burn more slowly, but no less brightly than "Waterfall" from the first album. Sprinter doesn't hide its influences (90s rock in particular), yet defies easy categorisation throughout and presents multiple doors for Mackenzie Scott to kick down in the future.

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https://sexwarrobots.blogspot.com/2013/04/torres-torres.html

Torres - Moon & Back (live)

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Torres - Torres

Torres - Torres

Torres is the most absurdly assured debut I've heard so far this decade. A full band's worth of musicians played on the album, but much of it is just Torres' electric guitar and voice, backed as much by reverb, hard panning and other devices as by the musicians. However, the band isn't there for perfunctory arrangements, nor are the sonic details a mere bag of tricks; in fact, one of Torres' talents is knowing how much of each a song needs. "Come to Terms" is an outlier; it's the only song to feature an acoustic guitar, and it's arguably the most lyrically conventional. Hear it out of context and you might peg Torres as an entirely different songwriter, one of a sort that aren't in short supply. Hear it in sequence as the penultimate track, however, and you've already heard the arrangements and songwriting and recording nuances that make her float to the top. You know she recorded it with an acoustic guitar and little else because she already had something to say and decided it was the best tool to help her convey it, as opposed to too many young songwriters who have nothing to say, but think that everything will fall into place if they strap on an acoustic and folk shit up.

The whole album expertly negotiates the line between self expression and self indulgence thanks to Torres' sense of restraint and her lyrics, which are emotive, but never lapse into simplistic "Dear Diary" cliches. Torres puts herself out there without burying her vocals in the mix or obscuring her lyrics with obliqueness, which would be a risk if she didn't have the talent and assuredness of a songwriter several years into their career. The bigger risk would have been to put in anything less than total commitment and hope nobody would notice.

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Torres - Moon & Back (live)