What An Enormous Room. TORRES

Can the difference be more different? Pink Floyd - 'The Wall': "What an enormous room! Are all these your guitars?!' and Torres - What An Enormous Room: "Look at all the dancing I could do!". TORRES owns the place immediately and takes over, not in awe at all.

Torres or Mackenzie Scott as her parents know her, is an active artist. In the business for about a decade, What An Enormous Room is her sixth album. On this blog you can find her since 2015 with 'Sprinter' and three more albums. This is my second review though. With this album I have found my way back into Torres' music, assisted by the strong and darkish single 'I Got The Fear'. In this song an organ or possibly some sort of horn is playing a dark riff in the background. Prominent for the first time, it returns on and off over the album.

An album made by a true musician. Almost all instruments were played by TORRES herself, with a little help from the two persons involved in the recording process. What Sarah Jaffe and TJ Allen could not prevent was the glum atmosphere of What An Enormous Room. This is not a happy album. Ms Scott has some issues to take care of and shares them if not in the lyrics than certainly in the mood of the album. I cannot describe it better than I've already done in my review of 'I Got The Fear':

"Darkness is what sticks with me most, with the eerie sounds coming deep out of the woods, like the wolves in Drs. P's 'Dodenrit'. I Got Fear does not give room to any other sentiment and it shows. "You're panicking", like Torres sings, tells it all. "Think I'll be alright", we can only hope this is the case."

This makes What An Enormous Room a serious album. TORRES means it and underscores it most of the time by a clinical sound, especially when a programmed drum with its thin synthesized sound accompanies the song. Like in 'Collect'.

The opposite is in the cold and dark sounding 'Artificial Limits'. The dark guitar puts a chill to my heart and the organ is almost creepy. This is a song like a graveyard on a misty, moonless night. Hopefully the singing is coming from the nearby unheated church. The only alternative is a zombie choir. Yes, it's all so dark, but I love this song. That organ part is fantastic and weaves itself through the monolithic guitar in a superb way. TORRES sings like Jerney Kaagman of Earth & Fire adding to the greatness of 'Artificial Limits'. A true highlight of this album.

I admit to not liking all songs on the album, starting with its first song. As a whole TORRES is in great form. Her take on alternative rock and pop works very well here. If boygenius ever needs a replacement it may well be Mackenzie Scott the remaining members would turn to.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order What An Enormous Room here:

https://torrestorrestorres.bandcamp.com/album/what-an-enormous-room