TORRES

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TORRES, aka Mackenzie Scott, is a singer and songwriter from Nashville who writes compelling and deeply personal songs, shot through with emotion and delivered with a voice charged with raw, urgent desperation. Her debut single Honey was Pitchfork’s “Best New Track” and her self titled album that followed was equally lauded by critics and fans alike. Her follow up, 2015’s Sprinter, built on this success and was particularly praised for its lyricism, with Mackenzie drawing on her Christian upbringing to furnish the album with both intimacy and intensity.

When she started writing the third TORRES record, Three Futures, she became intrigued by the idea that music could be enjoyed and experienced by all five senses. This concept wasn’t a new fascination, though; after all, the Brooklyn-via-Nashville musician is already known for lighting fragrant Palo Santo on stage before her concerts.

Three Futures exudes this idea via immersive music. Unlike 2015’s Sprinter, a stark record whose ominous electronic elements largely lurked in the shadows behind deliberate guitars and languid arrangements, Three Futures places mechanized grooves at the forefront. In a nod to the multitude of pleasures hinted at by the record’s theme, Scott’s sonic inspirations are diverse and enveloping: perforated electro-pop static, gothic industrial’s harsh textures and insistent Kraut rock.

Greyscale electronic beats and jagged guitars scrape together like malfunctioning machinery on “Concrete Ganesha,” but coexist peacefully on the Teutonic new wave buzz of “Greener Stretch” and robotic synth-pop of “Skim.” The title track, meanwhile, is a spacious meditation with heartbeat-like rhythms, chilly programmatic shivers and delicate guitar arcs.

Through it all, Scott remains a fluid and expressive vocalist: she employs both a macabre low rumble and a more animated, frantic delivery to convey the contorted desires described in “Helen in the Woods”; exhibits a throaty, hollow timbre on “Marble Focus”; and takes a solemn, reverential approach on “To Be Given a Body.”

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