New Album May 5, 2015 // May 18, 2015 [UK/EU] via Partisan Records,
“Sprinter,” the title track from Torres’s career-making new album, to be released in May, reveals this child: how she suffers, and finally, willfully thrives. Belittled and betrayed within the not-so-safe space of her religious upbringing, Scott’s sprinter runs in circles, gets into a lather. The song’s lyrics are both particular and philosophical. Whether it’s straight-up biography from Mackenzie Scott’s Christian youth in Macon, Georgia only matters if truth-telling is what it took to achieve the tight perspective that makes “Sprinter” both dizzying and forcefully clear. This kid who runs away and runs back and finally decides to outlast what endangers her — “if there’s still time, I’ll choose the sun” — could live in any town whose main roads are lined with overlit parks and recently constructed churches.
“Sprinter” rises and falls like a pubescent mood. Scott is playing in a quartet with three masters of dynamically complicated rock — producer/drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Ian Oliver, frequent collaborators with Polly Harvey, and guitarist Adrian Utley of Portishead. The grinding guitar riff that frames the song’s narrative embodies the push to achieve that every parentally-monitored child internalizes and dreads, an airier, spookier guitar line shows how that drive unravel. The distortion that overtakes the song midway feels like questioning, self-doubt, refusal. But the quietude that descends, that sunset feeling, as Scott modulates her fighting wail into a murmur. The moment has the impact of a chatty kid going silent, looking an adult in the eye.
The Fat Angel Sings 