Julien Baker and TORRES deliver raw southern devotion on “Send a Prayer My Way”
On Send a Prayer My Way, Julien Baker and TORRES (Mackenzie Scott) come together for their first collaborative album, merging their Southern roots, shared experiences of religious trauma, addiction, and queerness into a deeply intimate collection of songs. Both artists, known for unflinching honesty in their solo work, draw from the rich musical traditions of Tennessee and Georgia—where country music seeps into everyday life—to craft a record that feels grounded in working-class Southern neighborhoods but also wrestles with the divine and the destructive.
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
The opener, “Dirt,” sets the tone with a sparse, fingerpicked guitar that slowly unfolds into a wash of violin and piano. Baker’s gentle, trembling voice sings, “Spend your whole life getting clean/Just to wind up in the dirt,” a line that captures the futility and circularity of trying to escape one's past. It’s the kind of song that feels quintessentially Baker, save for the mournful pedal steel that gently tugs it into new terrain. The track is devastating in its restraint, beautiful in its simplicity.
On the other end of the emotional and sonic spectrum is “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left,” a honky-tonk stomper with biting lines like, “I'm not gonna be the angel on your shoulder/Don't look to me to be the one to tell you no.” It’s messy, defiant, and a bit chaotic in the best way—a refreshing shakeup from the more melancholic moments.
“Sugar in the Tank” is perhaps the album’s most earnest love song. Baker repeats “I love you” at the beginning of each line over a gentle banjo and warm Hammond organ, building intensity with every verse. When their voices join in the chorus, it’s heartfelt and raw, though the song’s conventional structure makes it feel less adventurous than others on the album.
“Bottom of a Bottle” is rich with Southern imagery: “I lost my nerve/So I searched the corner bar/I lost my faith/So I went wishing on a Lone Star.” A fiddle solo weaves between the verses, anchoring the heartbreak in something familiar and regional. Similarly, “Downhill Both Ways” offers no chorus—just five stark verses portraying addiction, misery, and the slow decline of a life caught in repetition, carried by forlorn pedal steel.
The album briefly shifts in tone with “Tape Runs Out,” which evokes a looser, ‘60s rock vibe, while “Tuesday” cuts deep with its depiction of a relationship stifled by homophobia. Set to a resonator guitar, the track builds to a jarring end when Scott sings, “Tell your mama she can go suck an egg.” It’s a childish insult that lands awkwardly after such an introspective and emotionally charged song—unsettling more than cathartic.
However, the awkward moments are few and far-between, overshadowed by authentic lyricism and warm vocals. “Sylvia,” a love song to Scott’s dog, offers some of the album’s most tender harmonies. “A day for me is a week for you/And my life’s already halfway through,” she sings, reflecting on the heartbreaking temporality of a dog’s life. It’s a track about unconditional love—the kind that rarely makes it into country ballads but feels just as worthy.
The album closes with “Goodbye Baby,” a quiet farewell that embodies the core of what this project achieves. In a genre often resistant to queerness, Baker and Scott carve out space for it—not as a gimmick or deviation, but as central and sacred. Send a Prayer My Way doesn’t just reimagine country music; it queers it, mourns through it, loves through it. And it never once asks for permission.