It doesn't happen very often. Hell, it feels like it happens with increasing irregularity as the 21st century stretches on. But every once in a while an album comes out that makes you want to run up and down the street screaming, "It's gonna be all right, everybody, rock 'n' roll is in good hands! The art form still matters, music still matters, and there's nothing the assholes can do to stop it!"
Sprinter, the sophomore album from Torres — aka Mackenzie Scott, a Belmont grad now residing in Brooklyn — is exactly that kind of album. It's a muscular, dynamic long-player that artfully balances the literary and the lysergic, the ethereal and the visceral in a way that makes every repeated listen feel like a new adventure. Scott has proven herself one of the most exciting songwriters of her generation — not bad for a first-shot gig out of college.
"The process [of writing Sprinter] was, just, expedited," Scott tells the Scene. "I had all this time in college to write the first record, it was all I was doing. I mean, my homework was to write songs. I had a lot of time to think about it. This time it all needed to happen more quickly. You don't have four years to write every record, at least you shouldn't wait four years to put out a record. ... So the process from the beginning, from the writing forward, was just very focused. I had to be very intentional about getting up, getting dressed, making myself coffee and breakfast and spending all day writing, treating it like a day job."
The result of Scott's disciplined approach is an album that's built to last. Each listen unravels further lyrical and sonic narratives, rich details that cling to the edges and flit through the peripheral without distracting from the internal dialogue. The compositions are raw, Spartan shards of rock, underpinned by Scott's bellowing vocals that allow her band the latitude to dig in and uproot the primal emotions at each song's core.
It's a compositional style that puts Scott squarely in the tradition of indie icons like PJ Harvey — with whom she shares a producer and rhythm section on Sprinter — or Helium's Mary Timony. It also puts Scott in the same artistic sphere as contemporaries like Sharon Van Etten and Jessica Lea Mayfield — the ladies keeping indie rock from sliding backward into nostalgia-bro irrelevance.
There are sonic similarities, sure, but it's the badass, brawling intellect at work that puts Scott in that peer group. Lines like, "Son, you're not a man yet / You fucked with a woman who would know," from "Son, You Are No Island," or "You borrowed my car a couple times / You don't like me, you just like my ride" from "Ferris Wheel" have a simplicity that belies the emotional burden they carry. Scott's writing has a razor-sharp modernity and unflinching femininity that puts her among the best and brightest young storytellers working in any form right now.
"I am afraid to see my heroes age" — that, ladies and gentleman, is a serious insight into the mental state of the contemporary American artist and, honestly, just the easiest to pick out of the epic album closer "The Exchange." It's been almost a decade since "indie" became the headquarters for displaced jingle writers just hoping to land a placement in a car commercial, turning pop music into a shopping list for luxury consumer goods. To hear true poetry about the human condition coming from your stereo in 2015 is a radical experience. And like the best poetry, it's as much about what isn't written as what is.
"I have always had focus issues," Scott explains. "I'm quite self-motivated, but I'm not very structured, and I get overwhelmed very easily. It was a major period of self-discovery. It's almost like I was standing back watching myself try to create some structure for myself and give myself a day job writing four, five, six hours a day. ... And I was standing back just laughing at myself. But I was also screaming at myself. It was a very enlightening experience."
Email Music@nashvillescene.com
