Torres - From introspection to the body

The 2010s saw the rise of a wave of young guitar-wielding songwriters, modern-day heirs to a lineage that links the work of PJ Harvey and Cat Power with the more recent output of Anna Calvi and St. Vincent, who have by now risen to the status of global superstars. Young women ready to carry that legacy forward in the underground, each with her own distinct traits, an emerging generation intent on renewing the tradition by adding new, personal elements, with Courtney Barnett and Waxahatchee shining ever brighter and more acclaimed, and among them the no less talented Torres, the stage name (borrowed from one of her grandparents' surname) chosen by American singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott.

Born in Orlando, Florida, on January 23, 1991, but effectively raised in Macon, Georgia (after being adopted), Mackenzie began playing flute and piano, and singing, from a very young age, first in her (Baptist) church choir and later in small shows put on by her school, falling in love early on with both Broadway musicals and the frivolous pop ditties of Britney Spears. Not long after, she started playing guitar and writing her first songs in her bedroom. Having moved to Nashville, Tennessee for her studies, she graduated in Composition from Belmont University Of Music, also taking courses in English Literature. She graduated in 2012, and during her final academic year she was simultaneously giving shape to her own music, an endeavor that would materialize at the start of 2013 with the recording of the tracks that would soon make up her self-titled debut album.

Torres is the result of five days of sessions recorded at Tony Joe White's home studio in Franklin, Tennessee: ten proudly self-produced, pain-soaked compositions, recorded with absolute austerity of means, armed with nothing but her own Gibson. Without striking any outdated riot grrrl poses, but rather slipping into the tradition of the most anguished, passionate blueswomen, Torres uses the full-blooded timbre of her voice to recount tales of domination and oppression, of violence and everyday torment, with disarming strength and depth, settling into a stern, composed expressive register in which emotion still surfaces with restraint. The result is a solidly cohesive whole, made up of tracks built essentially around voice and electric guitar, with only rare concessions to outside string contributions and small electronic touches.

A debut that finds its reference points in a blend of white blues, Southern folk and nineties-derived alternative rock, which at times takes on rough country brushstrokes ("Moon & Back," but also the moving opening of "Mother Earth, Father Good" — after all, we're in Nashville territory here...), at other times plays with restraint around sophisticated, atmospheric pop shores ("Chains"), or unleashes the dark dynamics typical of the great ladies of American song ("Honey," "Jealousy And I"). Torres, still a rough diamond and at times a touch unpolished, manages to give each track its own distinct character, the warm, instinctive touch of her delivery: that instinct allows the musician to express herself with boundless freedom over bare-bones musical sketches, never coming across as anything less than personal. Amid the shifting melodic lines of a pen not yet able to reach truly decisive, fully solid footing, what stands out above all is the inspired melodic vein and the undeniable talent already on display.

In Nashville, Torres previews the album's songs, in what will be just the first of a string of dates that will take her to perform both in the United States and in Europe, often opening for already established bands, such as Okkervil River.

Meanwhile Mackenzie moves to Brooklyn, her name starts to spread, and in 2014 she makes her first appearance on someone else's record, Sharon Van Etten's "Are We There" by Sharon Van Etten. In June of that same year she releases the new single, "New Skin," which anticipates the second chapter of her career, for which she relocates for a time to Dorset, England, as a guest of the legendary Rob Ellis.

Sprinter, released on May 5, 2015 on Partisan Records, first and foremost marks a change of look, with Scott dying her hair from black to an even more striking blonde. The musical coordinates reveal a carefully judged alternation between melodic moments — at times even melancholic, downbeat and introspective — and decisive electric surges, among which the alt-rock urgency of "New Skin" and "Sprinter" stands out, setting the stylistic tone for the whole album.

Calm takes over on tracks like "Ferries Wheel" and the long closer "The Exchange," while the first seeds of a (albeit modest) electronic experimentation — which will be explored further later on — appear within the coils of "Son, You Are No Island."

Sprinter is the album that puts Torres on the international map, within the small circle of new guitar-wielding songwriters poised to become the new benchmark for a certain female-fronted alt-folk-rock. Reviews are uniformly positive, and the attention she receives in the specialist press keeps growing, even beyond national borders.

The follow-up, Three Futures, marks not only her move to the prestigious 4AD roster — with the greater resources that come with it — but also another decisive change of direction. At 26, Mackenzie Scott decides to reveal her more electronic side, with Rob Ellis once again at the helm and St. Vincent elected as her main muse (just listen to "Skim" and the daring "Bad Baby Pie"). The electronics are sometimes left to settle into a minimal state, as on the long, gentle "To Be Given A Body," a sort of mission statement for the whole album, and at other times layered ("Greener Stretch"), elevating the songwriter's writing, this time built around synths and drum machines, sidelining the role of guitars.

But on Three Futures Torres doesn't give up on rougher, more rock-oriented moments altogether, which return forcefully in the final stretch of "Concrete Ganasha" and in the at-times-screamed "Helen In The Woods," which sits somewhere between 90s alternative rock and the darkwave of the previous decade. At the heart of the narrative are the body, pleasure, desire, as well represented not only by the lyrics but even more explicitly by the videos, in which Torres appears more androgynous than ever. And never more stylistically varied: while losing some of the rock urgency that characterized the previous record, she proves capable of pushing even into nu-folk territory, as happens on the opening "Tongue Slap Your Brains Out," sung in a register that sits somewhere between Nico and Joni Mitchell. The cover is composed like a Velazquez masterpiece: the subject — stiffly seated on a spotted couch — appears to be staring straight at the viewer, but is in fact completely captivated by her own feminine image reflected in the mirror to her left.

The 4AD label, unhappy with the sales results of Three Futures, decided to terminate the contract in 2019. The announcement was made by Torres herself, who let loose an unequivocal comment: fuck the music industry. No great loss: within a few weeks she had signed with Merge, announcing the release of a new album by 2020. By late July 2019 she was already among the headliners at MRG30, a festival held in North Carolina to celebrate the indie label's thirtieth anniversary.

January 31, 2020 brought Silver Tongue, nine tracks in which Torres shows she's aiming for a role closer to that of a more "conventional" songwriter. It's an approach skillfully expressed in the pastoral bareness of the acoustic "Gracious Day", in the folk roots from which "Records Of Your Tenderness" blooms, and in the very Sinead O'Connor-esque ode "A Few Blue Flowers". But the rock immediacy (the kind heard on "Sprinter", to be clear) hasn't been entirely lost: the shift away from more "alternative" paths is tempered by the vibrant jolt of the fat guitars that "Good Grief" is built on (for many songwriters this would be the song of a lifetime), which arrives, by now unexpectedly, as track number 6.

Without a song like that, Silver Tongue would have felt like an incomplete, at times faceless album. Instead, it's precisely from there, and from the presence of further up-tempo surges ("Dressing America", "Last Forest", with another lovely guitar unfurling at the close), that a more convincing and stylistically varied reading of the record takes shape. The journey is well balanced across these emotional ups and downs, a perfect vehicle for cataloguing the highs and lows of a romantic relationship, explored throughout much of the album, likely shaped by a private love story without a happy ending.

Silver Tongue's misfortune was to have come out just days before the pandemic took over a chunk of our lives. The result was that it couldn't be promoted at all, aside from a handful of online appearances, including a particularly good one on the ever-praiseworthy KEXP, with Scott performing some songs with just guitar and voice, a spontaneous smile and that melancholy-tinged warmth that eased the troubles of the moment for half an hour. A few months later, out of the isolation imposed by decree, came Torres's fifth record…

Thirstier, released on July 30, 2021, opens with feedback, the distortion kicking off opener "Are You Sleepwalking?", forcefully announcing a renewed desire to put electricity front and center, as if it were an act of liberation. The radio-friendly "Don't Go Puttin Wishes In My Head", the first track revealed, comes with a video that becomes the American songwriter's new statement on the theme of "diversity". On "Drive Me" the alt-rock approach is backed by a veil of electronics, far more pronounced in the lavish dancefloor synth-pop of the surprising "Kiss The Corners". A rain of synths also appears where the mood turns more eighties-oriented, on "Hand In The Air".

Torres thus confirms her desire to move stylistically in multiple directions, with jagged guitars and melodic passages chasing each other throughout the record. The former take center stage on the vibrant, upbeat "Hug From Dinosaur", steeped in crunchy sounds; the latter claim the tenderness expressed in "Big Leap", inherently inspired by Joni Mitchell. On "Thirstier" (the song) the two sides find a graceful balance, producing a tune with all the hallmarks of a potential evergreen. The closer "Keep The Devil Out", rippling with controlled chaos, completes the picture of Scott's new image, more positive and energizing than in the past, revealed through one of her most accomplished works overall, finally on par with "Sprinter", which still remains her definitive album.

In 2022 Mackenzie married Jenna Gribbon, a painter carving out considerable visibility on the Brooklyn scene thanks to her life-size impressionistic portraits, which very often depict Scott herself, captured in domestic poses. The long-sought serenity opens the path to What An Enormous Room, released in January 2024, a record on which Torres returns to a guitar rock that doesn't give up a strong electronic, propulsive streak. It's all clear from the opening "Happy Man's Shoes", a track drawing on avant-garde electro experiments of the Seventies, highlighting a clear funk leaning, well underscored by the bassline's gait.

The scorching "Life As We Don't Know It", under two minutes rummaging through the wreckage of new wave, is the most rock-oriented moment on the record, well matched by "Collect", a synth-rock number with arena-sized builds that could pass for a descendant of Depeche Mode's "Songs Of Faith And Devotion". At the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum sit the more intimate, hushed moments, including the introverted chamber-pop of "Songbird Forever", the evocative progressions of "Ugly Mystery", and above all the enveloping acoustic ballad "I Got The Fear", which in its first half looks toward Radiohead's "Karma Police". The icing on the cake is the sumptuous stride of "Artificial Limits", confirming songwriting that's consistently compelling and makes no secret of its ambition to reach important new heights.

2024 was a significant year for country music, with many major artists (even Beyoncé and Post Malone) choosing to try their hand at it (with mixed fortunes), making whole albums that often found considerable success, even beyond the borders of the United States. Torres is no exception, and in April 2025 came her country album, made jointly with singer-songwriter Julien Baker.

Send A Prayer My Way, while not claiming to be a masterpiece, is nonetheless a successful record, one that brings out further facets of Torres's complex artistic personality. Caught between folk ballads and alt-country instincts, the work of two queer artists within a traditionally conservative genre stands as a challenge to the American system, which has been firmly back in the hands of Donald Trump and the Republicans for several months now.

Still quite young, but deeply mature as a songwriter, Torres has managed to carve out her own space by drawing on "high" models, confirming herself as one of the best songwriters of her generation, backed by an ever-evolving image that has grown increasingly hard to pin down over time. So far, she's gotten every single move right…

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