TORRES Leaves Us Thirsty For More at the Sonic Cathedral

TORRES, the performing name of singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer Mackenzie Scott, has an incomparable ability to blend pop melodies with full, fuzzy chord progressions to create timeless power-pop gold. Her fifth studio album Thirstier is no exception. The anthemic LP reflects on self-discovery and love through infectious hooks and energetic production. Scott and her band […]

Baby, Torres Is Gonna Write Lusty Pop Music That Lasts

Pop music has its expected moves, its reliable strategies to get a musical payoff by making the melody’s apex the main event. Torres isn’t interested in reserving her intensity for the high notes. She engineered the chorus of “Don’t Go Puttin’ Wishes In My Head,” a muscled-up power-pop song on her ravishing fifth album, Thirstier, […]

Record Of The Week: ‘Thirstier’ From Torres

Torres, the performing name of the singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer Mackenzie Scott, hasn’t suffered from a lack of nerve or vision at any point during her recording career. She’s taken up storylines and vantage points a more timid artist might not touch, laying open religious and relational dread and embodying gender fluidity with a fortitude […]

Exit/In For The Win

Tonight, Merge Records artist Torres — whose newest LP Thirstier was our #RecordoftheWeek (and the subject of a simultaneous NPR Music feature) not too long ago — graces one of the most storied stages in Music City, a room that live music fans (and longtime residents clutching to wisps of Old Nashville) hope remains a […]

New Music Experience: June 25, 2021

It’s that time of year in the music world where we all — magazines, websites, radio stations, podcasts —look back and make lists. Everyone has been putting out their picks at the 6-month mark of 2021 and for this week’s New Music Experience the staff of WNXP pull together a playlist of our favorites so […]

New Music Experience: May 14, 2021

It’s a big day in big name music releases and while we feature a couple of those — Leon Bridges, Black Keys — but this week’s New Music Experience is primarily focused on a diverse array of artists around the edges of mainstream awareness. Some of them pull past sounds into the modern landscape from soul — Durand Jones & The Indications — to psychedelia — The Babe Rainbow — to Tropicalia — Marinero.   This […]

Julien Baker: Tiny Desk Concert

There are nine spare, simple songs on Julien Baker‘s debut album, Sprained Ankle, and every one of them is sad. In fact, she came to the Tiny Desk with an untitled new one — since given the name “Funeral Pyre” — and she appropriately introduced it as “Sad Song #11.” But Baker’s shimmering electric-guitar picking, […]