Album Review: Julien Baker and Torres - 'Send A Prayer My Way'
Almost ten years in the making, the debut album from supergroup duo Julien Baker and Torres is finally here!
From Beyonce’s ‘Cowboy Carter’, Lil Naz X’s ‘Old Town Road’ and in the last year Chapell Roan’s ‘The Giver’, three things have become clear in the last ten years: 1. Country music shows no sign of going away 2. Country Music is cool and finally 3. Country music has and will continue to be a mainstay as part of popular queer culture. All of this goes to prove just how important and special it is that ten years after a handshake promise at a concert in Chicago, the debut album by Julien Baker and Torres is finally here.
For Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott (Torres), country music and the ethos behind it has always been a reminder of home. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee and Macon, Georgia respectively, it was the soundtrack to their formative years. For Baker, a love of country music started at home and in church; singing and playing guitar with her cousins Carter Family-style and dancing to Steve Earl while visiting family in Arkansas. Torres also found country music through her family, oftentimes listening to 90s crooners like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in the backseat of her older siblings’ cars. It is a genre that glows with familiarity and home comforts, but until recent years has held a tainted reputation. Kids have long dubbed it annoying and boring and heavyweights of the genre have always looked a curtain way. What this album aims to do, just as so much of recent country music has done, is show that it's a genre for everyone. ‘Send A Prayer My Way’ is both a love letter to all those who came before who demanded to be a part of the genre, and a call for change not just in country music but across all the art we see and hear. It gives due credit to musicians past, present and future and goes to show that country can be a home not just for Baker and Torres, but to all.
Fans were treated with 4 singles in the leadup to the release, most recently with opening track ‘Dirt’. Reflective, pensive and with a mix of hope, happiness and sadness, it is a really interesting way to kick off proceedings. It speaks to the universal woes that have inspired country writers for generations: a story of flawed people who amidst hard times and struggle have a determination to find something greater. It could be showing up for someone you love or a pursuit of paradise-the lyrics are written in a way that allows you to attribute your own meaning.
‘Sometimes it makes me feel better, sometimes it makes me feel worse. Used to think that it was magic-now I’m sure that it’s a curse. Spend your whole life gettin clean just to wind up in the dirt. Got a shortcut in to paradise that’s killin me but I still gotta try to get there first’
Opening the album in this way is intriguing as it begs the question as to what sort of tone the rest of the record is going to have. When I look at this track and the lyrics, it speaks to perhaps a struggle with addiction and overcoming that battle. To others, it could be a reflection on a relationship that soured. While we cannot be sure, I surmise that for Torres and Baker, it is looking at the difficulty that came with releasing this album and have it be taken seriously. Both have been very open about the political undertones of ‘Send A Prayer My Way’ and are all-too-aware of petty premature criticisms that have come from close-minded country diehards. With this in mind, the line ‘used to think that it was magic-now I’m sure it’s a curse’ could be about the current climate within the music industry; artists under constant scrutiny and pressure to fit a certain mold and the risks that come from trying to break away from what is ‘expected’ of you.
The process of writing the album started with track 4, ’Bottom of A Bottle’. It began as a demo written by Torres that was tentatively emailed to Baker with the subject line ‘pastiche’. It has all the hallmarks of what you would expect from a country song all the while telling a story from a perspective you might not have heard before. Such is the bones of the album; tales of traditional and conservative upbringings told by someone who tows the line of being worlds apart from their youth whilst still wanting to connect with their roots.
A particularly special moment comes in the form of ‘Tuesday’, the ninth track on the album. It is a tender looking back on a relationship that could have been and ‘centers on trying to overcome and heal from the guilt, shame and religious abuse that so many people experience discovering their identity and growing up queer’. It tells the story of Scott having a crush as a teen and how she dealt with the fallout from the girl's mother who did not approve of the relationship. It's a song she has admitted that she has tried to write several times but until now had never found the right words:
“Every time I tried, it came out as stupid young person stuff … But finally getting it out made me feel much better, like I never have to think about that experience anymore.”
Both Baker and Torres have established themselves as being two of the most emotionally impactful singer-songwriters of the last ten years so it is absolutely no surprise that this track has the emotional weight of a sucker punch to the guts. Its impact is all the more potent considering the political landscape the album’s release finds itself in and the continued difficulties and limitations faced by people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. The track is searing with its description of finding yourself and struggling with what you uncover and while the ending is brilliantly funny and a well earned ‘fuck you’ to those who stood in the way of Scott’s ability to live authentically as her true self, the lyrics that stand out the most to me are the ones that come immediately before:
‘No I cannot believe that I stepped down and lied, I should have told you I loved you and now I know that your shame was not mine and I am perfect in my Lord’s eyes. For a decade I let you live in my head but with this exorcism I put our story to bed’
It’s on tracks like this where the intention and motivations behind the album are at their clearest. Yes these are songs about drinking, falling in and out love and having fun-all of which fit the country stereotype like a boot-but they are rooted in a reclamation of what makes these two women who they are. Being queer and from the south need not be a perilous dichotomy, and instead is the foundation upon which they can begin the process of self acceptance and love.
Musically, favourites emerge in ‘Sylvia’ and ‘Downhill Both Ways’. Both tracks are about the idea of running away, but each explore the theme differently. For ‘Sylvia’, it is a tale of having to leave a loved one behind that drips with yearning and nostalgia whereas in ‘Downhill Both Ways’, there is a hope of escaping into the night with someone. The two ask the question of what the differences are between having to run away from someone and the desire of running away with someone and the difficulties that come from both. Looking at the lyrics, it is clear that for Baker and Torres, there is a real pain that arises regardless of which path you end up having to take.
‘So if you wanna hop in I’ll give you a ride, God I’d really love if you could make it tonight… You could be any way you choose, but whats the matter when it looks the same goin out and coming back? Now it’s downhill both ways.’
‘Sylvia, my baby, I have got to go away… Can’t decide if I’m at home on the road when I know the road ain’t any kind of home… So alone when I’m not with you but I ache to see the world. What’s it even mean to have everything if I can’t share it with my girl?’
Whilst in reality, the two songs are about completely different things (Sylvia is about Torres’ dog!) the emotions that come from both are undoubtedly in harmony. There is a longing for something different, something bigger that is at the root of the two songs and the lengths one has to go to in pursuit of that something. In both songs, it becomes clear that this is a journey you ultimately have to go on alone. It speaks to what the album as a whole symbolises; two women going out into the world with their artistry in search of something greater. It just so happens that they found each other along the way.
Should you want to venture across the pond, there have been a load of gig dates announced over the next couple of months to celebrate the album’s release. The pair have also already been booked for a handful of festivals including the High Water Music Festival in South Carolina, The Green River Festival in Massachusetts and Zootown Music Festival in Montana. As far as gigs over on this side of the Atlantic are concerned, we can only wait patiently-but considering we have waited 9 years for this album, what’s a little more?
Words by Kirsty-Ann Thomson
