Julien Baker & TORRES Drop 'Sugar In The Tank'
13 December
After surprising fans with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this week, today Julien Baker & TORRES have dropped their much-talked-about debut single 'Sugar in the Tank' via Matador Records.
Formed by their shared experiences of growing up queer in the south, 'Sugar in the Tank' not only reflects Julien Baker & TORRES’ love of country music, but joyfully reclaims the genre’s traditions and iconography which until only recently felt exclusionary. The single is a beautiful duet that is authentically country as it is a celebration of the songwriter’s roots.
About Julien Baker
A native of Memphis who began playing music in church as a child, Julien Baker shot to worldwide attention in 2015 with her show-stopping debut, Sprained Ankle. Recorded in only a few days, it was a bleak yet hopeful meditation on identity, addiction, faith, resilience and redemption. An intense and immersive performer, her live shows were described by The New Yorker as “…. hushed, reverential. The only sounds you hear between songs are her fingers as she tweaks the tuning on her electric guitar, scattered whispers between friends, and the rustling as the crowd waits patiently for Baker to start strumming again."
Baker's acclaim grew with 2017's Matador debut Turn Out the Lights and the following year's self-titled debut EP with boygenius, the trio she formed with fellow era-defining artists Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. With the release of her 2021’s solo album Little Oblivions, Baker cemented herself as "one of the leading female singer/songwriters of her generation, both for her music’s muted grandeur and lyrics that seem to dive headlong into emotional chaos" (Rolling Stone). The album was met with worldwide critical acclaim and supported with performances on Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show with James Corden and CBS This Morning’s Saturday Sessions.
Baker reunited with boygenius in 2023 for their first full-length, the record, which won three Grammy Awards and was supported by the biggest tour of the musicians' collective careers -- including sold out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl.
About TORRES
TORRES is the pseudonym of Mackenzie Scott. She was born January 23, 1991, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her wife Jenna, stepson Silas, and puppy Sylvia. She has been releasing albums and performing as TORRES since 2013.
What an enormous room is TORRES’ sixth studio album (her third with Merge). It was recorded in September and October 2022 at Stadium Heights Sound in Durham, North Carolina. It was engineered by Ryan Pickett, produced by Mackenzie Scott and Sarah Jaffe, mixed by TJ Allen in Bristol, UK, and mastered by Heba Kadry in NYC. The album contains 10 songs. Mackenzie wrote all of them. Sarah played bass guitar, synths, drums, organ, and piano. Mackenzie sang vocals, played guitar, bass, synths, organ, piano, and programmed drums. Additional synth bass, tambourine, and shakers were played by TJ Allen.