Torres: One Universe Blues

We weren’t sure when we’d hear new music from Mackenzie Scott — better known as Torres — again after the release of her brilliant 2015 album Sprinter, but it turns out the time has come sooner than later. The Georgia native-turned-Brooklynite recently dropped a new full-length record, Three Futures, her third since 2013. Once again, Scott returned to the co-producer role, reuniting with Sprinter co-producer Rob Ellis for another 10 tracks.

Recorded in Manchester and Dorset, England in late summer of last year, the album is a rich fabric of emotional highs and lows, covering themes of uncertainty, lust, bitterness, gratitude and nostalgia. Sonically, it’s somewhat darker than Sprinter, but lyrically, many of the songs — though they often touch on heavy subject matter— carry an air of optimism, as though Scott is viewing each topic through a newly discovered lens of gentleness and understanding.

“The album as a whole is meant to be a celebration of the body as a mechanism of joy and all that comes with it, even the sorrow,” says Scott.

Title track “Three Futures” is a perfect representation of that sentiment. It’s a powerful look back at a past romance through which the narrator attempts to tie up the many loose ends remaining long after the sparks have died out. With a palpable sense of remorse, the narrator lays out for their scorned lover what was really going on as the relationship started to unravel, explaining how they had to make a decision between three possible paths, each leading to an entirely different future:

            I hope that’s what you’ll remember

            Not how I left, but how I entered

            You didn’t know I saw three futures;

            One alone, and one with you,

            And one with the love I knew I’d choose

The song is some of Scott’s best work. She’s able to play a villain without appearing villainous, simultaneously copping to her mistakes, reflecting on the relationship’s highlights and inspiring sympathy from the listener. The relatability of the topics at hand — an unshakeable fear of commitment, a wish to see all possible outcomes before making a final decision on which path to walk — plague all of us, which makes the song that much easier to identify with.

“I think that the biggest thing I was getting at there was the frustration of not being omnipresent, of only being able to inhabit the one vessel we’ve been given,” says Scott. “Even though there may exist parallel universes and a multiverse — which we’re probably going to figure out in the next 10 to 50 years — there’s still the frustration of only existing in one form. No matter how many futures we envision, or how much we wish we could change the past, no matter how much we wish we could exist in multiple present tenses, we can’t do it. That’s what the song is about.”

Scott reaches a point of positivity on “Bad Baby Pie,” another love song, but this time about a relationship brought back from the brink of destruction. In it, the narrator shows their gratitude toward their lover, who — as rumor has it — was about to suggest they go their separate ways. The song is an interesting parallel to “Three Futures,” as it sees Scott switching places, in a way, with the scorned lover of the aforementioned track. Though she hasn’t mentioned whether the songs are connected, it’s sort of fun to think that the scenario played out in “Bad Baby Pie” is one of the “three futures” she was speaking about.

Historically, Scott has written as often of love and heartache as she has family, and Three Futures follows the trend set by her previous works. The album’s closer, “To Be Given A Body,” features an original melody her mother Cindy sang to her as a child.

“When I was a kid, she would sing me this lullaby that I always thought belonged to somebody else or was something she’d learned somewhere. I didn’t find out until pretty recently — when I recorded the album — that she had actually come up with that melody. So, I asked her if I gave her a writing credit if I could hum it on my new album. She gave me her blessing, so that’s really dear to me.”

The track is a celebration of life, childhood, family and innocence, replaying sunny vignettes from the narrator’s youth: falling asleep on a ski lift, laughing with mom and dad on Sunday mornings, the feeling of living before the weight of the world starts settling onto your shoulders. Still, there’s an implied sense of impermanence overlaying it all, an awareness through the telling of those stories that those moments have gone and will never come back again.

“Life itself is impermanent. I think that’s one thing I didn’t know as a kid,” says Scott. “Getting older doesn’t mean that you get to keep the people and the experiences you love. You don’t get to keep anything. That’s the gist of it. We don’t get to keep anything. We don’t even get to keep our own bodies in the end.”