Julien Baker & TORRES
Send a Prayer My Way
MATADOR
Julien Baker and TORRES’s Mackenzie Scott are both indie rock songwriters who grew up in the Southern Baptist church—Scott in Macon, Georgia, Baker in Memphis. Both have a passion for a wide swathe of honkey-tonk and alt-country music, as evidenced by their recent Spotify playlists. Both of these influences shape the artists’ debut joint album Send a Prayer My Way, whose good-natured lead single “Sugar in the Tank” set an authoritative tone for their “queer country” collaboration. The songwriting of country music has long been underappreciated by pop and rock purists until recent years, and Baker and Scott continue to help steer the pop-country revival in the right direction with a nuanced and emotionally kinetic set of hangdog story-songs.
Opener “Dirt” sets a fitting scene for a country record, with natural writing that packs a wallop: “You were shouting through the screen door / With my back turned towards you in the driveway / I said, ‘What the hell you gotta scream at me for’ / You said, ‘You aren’t gonna listen any other way.’” The songs that follow continue to cover everyday pain: barstool blues (“Off the Wagon”), winking cowgirl romance (“The Only Marble I Got Left”), the lovely perfume of youthful pining (“Bottom of a Bottle”). The tracks can lean into tropes, for sure, but Baker and Scott put their unique spin on rusty spurs. They even toss in a reinterpretation of Songs: Ohia’s “Farewell Transmission” with “Tape Runs Out.”
The album is also a good reminder that TORRES deserves more attention for her solo work. A prime example is “Tuesday,” where Scott takes the lead with her deeper register. The song follows a young queer romance beset by a condemning mother. Scott pulls from her past experiences with lyrical pangs like a toothache yelping for home remedies: “Asked me to write her mother and say sorry for the confusion / That of course there’d been no sin / And to emphasize how much I loved Jesus and men.” The final line on the track is a shot glass of outlaw-country comedy: “And one more thing, if you hear this song / Tell your mama she can go suck an egg.”
Even amidst the winking lyrics and fun country melodies, Send a Prayer My Way is also a reclamation of country music on both the production and session musician sides. The record was produced by Baker and Scott (with additional production by illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin), mixed by Trina Shoemaker, engineered by Tudzin and Gory Smelley, and mastered by Heba Kadry. Studio musicians included Tudzin, J.R. Bohannon, Sarah Jaffe, Zöe Brecher, Aisha Burns, and Sarah Goldstone. Look again at the names of the team members for this project. Send a Prayer My Way is refreshingly not the male-heavy country world of the past, and the stories for each song follow suit. This is a record that wears its nudie suits with pride, breaks down a traditionally segregated genre, and isn’t afraid to have some fun along the way.
