Again in 2021, the musician Mackenzie Scott — higher referred to as Torres — made what felt like an enormous level-up along with her fifth full-length Thirstier, which we named our Album Of The Week. Immediately, she’s asserting its follow-up — it’s referred to as What an unlimited room and it is going to be launched on January 26. She recorded it at Stadium Heights Sound in Durham, NC, and produced it alongside Sarah Jaffe. Lead single “Acquire” is glowering and sharp and builds to a pair of crunchy, repeated hooks: “Did I hit a nerve?,” “I’m right here to gather.”

Julien Baker wrote the album’s official biography, and in it she writes: “What I can say about TORRES is I believe the music comes from a convicted place. Not convicted which means an individual is narrowly and foolishly dedicated to a really perfect, or unshakably satisfied of themselves, or a zealot, or cussed.”

Watch a video for “Acquire,” directed by Dani Okon, under.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Completely satisfied man’s sneakers”
02 “Life as we don’t understand it”
03 “I obtained the concern”
04 “Wake to flowers”
05 “Ugly thriller”
06 “Acquire”
07 “Synthetic limits”
08 “Jerk into pleasure”
09 “Endlessly dwelling”
10 “Songbird eternally”

TOUR DATES:
01/17 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Store *
01/18 Chicago, IL @ Venue TBA
01/19 Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar *
01/20 Nashville, TN @ The Basement *
01/22 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade (Purgatory) *
01/23 Durham, NC @ Motorco *
01/24 Washington, DC @ The Atlantis *
01/25 Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry *
01/26 Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere *
01/27 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
02/02 Paris, FR @ Le Hasard Ludique
02/03 Bruges, BE @ Cactus Membership
02/05 Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Upstairs
02/06 Cologne, DE @ Bumann & SOHN
02/07 Berlin, DE @ Privatclub
02/08 Munich, DE @ Milla
02/10 Baden, CH @ One in all a Million Pageant
02/12 Manchester, UK @ YES
02/13 Bristol, UK @ Unusual Brew
02/14 London, UK @ Oslo
03/20 Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge ^
03/22 Salt Lake Metropolis, UT @ Kilby Courtroom ^
03/23 Boise, ID @ Venue TBA
03/26 Seattle, WA @ Neumos ^
03/27 Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios ^
03/29 San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du Nord ^
03/30 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room ^
04/01 San Diego, CA @ Casbah ^
04/02 Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar ^
04/04 Dallas, TX @ Membership Dada ^
04/05 Austin, TX @ The Parish ^
04/06 Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Corridor (Upstairs) ^
* w/ Aisha Burns
^ w/ Liza Anne

Right here is Baker’s full biography:

What I can say about TORRES is I believe the music comes from a convicted place.

Not convicted which means an individual is narrowly and foolishly dedicated to a really perfect, or unshakably satisfied of themselves, or a zealot, or cussed.

I imply devoted, I imply: If TORRES’ music will get bizarre, will get brainy, will get humorous, will get defiant, provokes, intentionally scandalizes, employs the crass to undermine the austere, courts lofty philosophical reality—it’s all completed with the conviction of an artist with the (important) perception within the value of their job.

I believe you’ll be able to hear it within the songs, somebody reaching, leaning over the boundary between identified and never, probing the almighty.

After a decade and 6 studio albums and nevertheless many one-offs and excursions and articles learn and conversations had, the components of this pursuit I’ve been capable of observe are all marked by a dedication to creation that treats the act—ongoing—with as a lot preciousness because the proof of the act that’s left in a report.

The modes of being are completely different: heartbroken, broke, livid (right- and unrighteously), awestruck by love, compelled by need. typically resigned to dying, typically fascinated by and reverent of the longer term. Typically viscerally current, different instances suspended in heady consciousness, poised on a fulcrum of commentary and participation within the phenomenon that aliveness is.

The instruments are the identical: devices that growl and shriek and moan, a lyrical voice shouting, swooning, chuckling, snarling because the second instructions. TORRES’ music-making is carried out in a melodic vocabulary distinctive to itself—strategies, tools, circumstances shifting across the impulse to affirm the self throughout the world, to make artwork that bears all these little artifacts of the divine and of the true and present it to folks and know it’s useful. I believe that’s what Mackenzie’s music does. And I believe it’s simply extremely good music to take heed to.

– Julien Baker

What an unlimited room is out 1/26 through Merge.