This next album is certain to land on my Top 10 albums list for 2025.
Disc 1848 is…Send a Prayer My Way
Artist: Julien Baker & Torres
Year of Release: 2025
What’s up with the Cover? I believe the kids call this “rotting”. Fear not, Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott (aka Torres) are not zombies – they’re just listless.
At least two coffee drinks are within easy reach so that could help. With the listlessness, I mean. Not zombie-ism. Only one cure for that my friends – the old click-bang. Next time don’t brave an infested café for that second coffee and it wouldn’t have to come to this.
But I digress…
How I Came To Know It: I’m a fan of Torres, so I was excited to see she had a new album out. I was less excited about Julien Baker, as her previous records had not grabbed me. I was resolved to check it out at some point, and was further encouraged by my local baristas, who both said this was a good one.
So I did that, I liked it, and here we are. Another quarter-inch of shelf space occupied.
How It Stacks Up: I have five Torres albums and no Julien Baker albums. As a collaboration, this record is neither, so can’t stack up either way.
Ratings: 5 stars
When artists collaborate they lose a little of their individuality and create something new through that process. This is a certainty. What isn’t certain is whether that ‘something new’ is any good.
Consider “Trio” as one example. Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt – all legends, all amazing, all welcome in the CD Odyssey collection. “Trio” should be great, but instead is a saccharine sappy mess. I owned it for a good five minutes and is now gone with nothing to show for it other than this nasty little paragraph you’re reading now.
Enter Julien Baker & Torres. Not living legends (at least not yet) but definitely two artists with their own distinct sounds that decided to go down that uncharted third road of collaboration. How did it go for them?
As it happens, it could not have gone better. Consider my prior uncertainty around Julien Baker extinguished, and as for Torres, this is the best work I’ve ever heard from them, solo or otherwise.
Torres solo records can be a bit weird and ambient. This is not an insult. I love how they are ambient and weird. I’ve reviewed three of them so far and they all earned four stars.
Torres’ voice is low, rounded and fills a room. It is hard to imagine anything you’d want to intrude when you’re under its spell. But then along comes Julien Baker, with her high angst-ridden vocals. Just as full, but higher and lighter – the sky to Torres’ earth. The combination creates a tension greater than the sum of the parts.
Consider the country twang of “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left” with Torres singing low like she’s channeling the ghost of mid-career Leonard Cohen, and Julien coming in with a loose harmony at the second verse like Cohen’s ever-changing but always talented female collaborators.
While the vocal combination is sublime, the alchemy goes deeper. Somehow the combination of styles led the duo to a folksy country. I’m sure they would call it indie, but what a terribly uncertain and diffuse word. This is folk-country, right down to the gentle guitar strums, the lilting melodies, and the lyrics-forward focus. Long time readers will know this style of music is VERY likely to land in my happy place.
If you’re going to put your vocals forward in the mix, you better have something to say, and once again the duo do not disappoint. This record is deeply personal, exploring both singers’ complex relationship with faith, love and heartache. The record holds a delightful tension between crippling doubt and self-sabotage, juxtaposed with a bit of romantic whimsy that leaves you comforted in the knowledge that love will always win out. You’ll feel deep dark feels, but you’ll also receive a reassuring hug.
Along the way, you’ll be gifted with powerful imagery and master-class storytelling that takes the specific and makes it speak to something larger. The examples on “Send a Prayer…” are almost bottomless, but a couple of my favourites include:
From, “Sugar in the Tank”:
“I love you all the way to hell and back
I love you tied up on the train tracks
I love you clear as day and in the dark
I love you sleeping on my dead left arm”
Brilliant, and the way the song later takes the effects of sugar in a gas tank (bad) and turns it on its head into a grand romantic gesture is so good I won’t spoil it by quoting anything.
And from “Bottom of a Bottle”:
“I care too much for my own good
I’ve got a dog in every fight
Lost a few along the way”
Been there, done that.
I could quote and quote and quote this record, because as a lover of language it just keeps giving me more of what I love, but the real magic happens when everything is paired together. The words, the voices, the gentle and insistent strum of the guitars, and the collaborative alchemy that happens when two great artists put aside who they are at the door and create something truly special together.
Best tracks: all tracks (minus the ten seconds of outtake conversation at the start of “Goodbye Baby)
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