Questioning what you once held fundamentally true is exhausting, but in every possible way, Brooklyn-via-Nashville singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott's intense, spiritual sophomore album as Torres suggests that this is work worth doing. Her 2013 self-titled debut felt inherently raw in its stripped-down folk-rock, a sound akin to that of her future collaborator Sharon Van Etten. On Sprinter, however, Scott shrouds her voice with feedback and heavier rock instrumentation, created alongside PJ Harvey producer and percussionist Rob Ellis. The sound is like a gauze bandage covering the emotional wounds, the profound isolation and fear of abandonment, that sit at the heart of Sprinter. But Scott lets a little red bleed through nonetheless, and for listeners, at least, that's a good thing.
An album ago, Scott told what was presumed to be some version of her own adoption story with "Moon & Back"; the song is written from the perspective of a woman who left a letter for the baby she gave up, but no names are given. Though Torres continues to write from perspectives besides her own—and it continues to prove interesting—on Sprinter, any trepidation she may have felt over first-person narrative is pushed aside in pursuit of unflinching honesty. On the album's stunning, solo acoustic closer "The Exchange", Scott is direct where before she was mysterious: "Mother, father, I'm underwater, and I don't think you can pull me out of this," she coos in the chorus. "Blew my per diem on an eighth of Blue Dream/ So I can breathe but I still can't breathe," Scott adds, revealing her coping method of choice—sativa-dominant hybrids. The song's arresting plainspokenness recalls Neko Case's memorable a cappella declaration of abandonment and rejection on The Worst Things Get, the Harder I Fight...'s "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu".
Sprinter splits its mood between depression and rage, mirrored in the album's loud-quiet musical dichotomy that is not unlike that of early PJ Harvey albums. With the aid of her co-producer Ellis (showing off his status as an underrated rock drummer who makes every beat sound crisp), Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley (who recently helped Perfume Genius also reach a musical state as real as it is deeply unsettling), and Harvey bassist Ian Oliver, Scott fully inhabits her loudest moments by inching towards post-rock and synth-rock. The album's crowning achievement, "Son, You Are No Island", forges a mystical through line from Celtic music to Hole's "I Think That I Would Die", to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, to Mica Levi's Under the Skin soundtrack. This song simmers with rage, a stick of dynamite waiting to blow, but it's Scott's restraint in delaying the explosions—first a wall of hardened distortion, then via vocal loops—that hits the hardest.
When she lets her depressive side out, Scott can ramble slightly. On "Ferris Wheel", Scott takes her time meandering through intense pining for another who's "got the sadness too" while an echoing guitar provides a woozy background twang. For such a slow pace, it goes on about twice as long as it needs to (seven minutes). On the flipside sits "Cowboy Guilt", a rare light spot that lasts less than three minutes. Scott captures the thrill of instant interpersonal connection via the quick and steady beat of a drum machine and flourishes of a music box melody.
When Scott can find the right balance of these elements—dark, introspective, midtempo, highly distorted, and in the four to five-minute range—she hits a sweet spot, like on "New Skin" and the album's title track. These are the songs where Scott seems to lay out her thesis statements with a slight nods to theology; on "New Skin", atop a formidable '90s alt-rock build, Scott offers up a conclusion she's come to already: "If you never know the darkness, then you're the one who fears the most." Identity is the thorniest of growing pains, particularly when—like Scott—you come from adoptive lineage and a Southern Baptist upbringing you're now sussing out on your own. Wherever she might be on her own personal journey, Scott sounds on her records like someone getting closer every moment to her ultimate truth.
