Mackenzie Scott, the 29-year-old US indie singer-songwriter behind Torres, is rarely more interesting than when she’s talking about her art. She’s described her music as “Gregorian country”, “Enya meets Phil Collins’s Tarzan soundtrack”, and “Phantom of the Opera [with] pedal steel”. It’s just a shame that not enough of the flair she finds for juxtaposition reappears on this fourth album as memorable music.
Scott has always been honest in her interviews and work, speaking freely about a childhood as an adoptee brought up by Georgian Baptist churchgoers, her relationship struggles and mental health. Where some artists might find this sort of transactional honesty debilitating, exchanging privacy for art, Scott’s revelations often seem liberating to her.
What’s most compelling about Silver Tongue is that it’s ostensibly Scott’s in-love-with-being-in-love album. Yet from the first song, her paramour seems to be considerably more ambivalent about their relationship, for reasons Scott might not fully understand, introducing a fascinating element of uncertainty. Given her often wonderful way with words, though, might she have been better off writing a novel about it?
