Torres – Skim

Mackenzie Scott, the Georgia-born, Brooklyn-based artist known better as Torres, has never been one to shy away from some of the harsher realities of life. Two years on from her last album ‘Sprinter’, she’s returned on new label 4AD. But while some may have passed, it seems that Torres’ wounds either haven’t healed or fresh ones have been newly opened as she’s delivered a track that’s just as bruised, and just as painfully open as ever. As ever though, Mackenzie manages to deliver her thoughts on a grim situation with an admirable amount of restraint and poise. With ‘Skim’, Mackenzie growls over passages of whirring synth melodies and her signature scuzzy guitar, lamenting about catching her lover in the midst of an affair and the subsequent mental distress that she feels. Almost ironically, it doesn’t skirt around the edges of the issue. She asks searching, almost uncomfortably intimate questions about the incident like “did he hold your hips with authority?” But really, no matter how many questions she asks, it doesn’t make any difference in the end. She knows that “I’m only the skim of what has already been”, a single thin layer on the top of another life. It’s emotionally stark and pretty brutal, but that’s just what Mackenzie does best.