Foto-© Ebru Yildiz

Julien Baker & TORRES haben am 18. April via Matador ein gemeinsames Album veröffentlicht. Aber nicht irgendein Album – ein Countryalbum. In den Songs geht es um Religion, das Aufwachsen im Süden der USA als queere Frauen und das Gefühl dazuzugehören.

Ebenfalls im April konnten wir mit TORRES über die Entstehung der Platte via Zoom sprechen. Wir erfahren, warum von der Idee bis zur Veröffentlichung fünf Jahre vergangen sind, wie sie und Baker sich auf den Country geeinigt haben, den sie spielen wollten und warum es wichtig und traurig zugleich ist, dass es eine Besonderheit ist, so eine Platte von zwei queeren Frauen in der Welt zu haben. Wir sprechen über den Mut, sich seiner Herkunft zu bedienen, auch wenn man anders ist und wie anders es ist, ganz klassisch ohne große technische Hilfsmittel auf der Bühne zu stehen.

Let’s talk about Send A Prayer My Way. How does it feel so close to release day?
It’s more surreal than usual. We have been working on this for so long, it’s been about five years in the making. I’m like, „Are you sure? Is it actually happening?“

Julien [Baker] and you played your first show together in 2016. My first thought was, „Why release the album now?“ Now you’re saying the album has been in the works for five years. How can we imagine that?
I reached out to her in early 2020, and to my pleasant surprise, she said yes. I had assumed she wouldn’t have the time, but it turned out she did. So, we started sending ideas back and forth right away. In early 2022, we went to Marfa, Texas, to record the album. We stayed for a couple of weeks. Then, Julien released an album with boygenius [The Record] soon after. With the press and tour surrounding the release, she no longer had time. The album was shelved for a while, and we just waited. When the boygenius tour had finished, we went back to the studio in Brooklyn in early 2024. Because we had had so much time to sit with it, we had some ideas. We finished the album, and since then, it’s just been a matter of logistics and working with everyone else’s timing.

The songs touch on unexpected topics for a country album, such as struggling with religion and growing up queer in the Southern states. Why did you decide to address these issues through country music? These are your lived experiences, and collaborating with someone on these topics also seems contradictory from the outside.
I’m learning that there are more subconscious reasons for choosing to bring someone else with me than I initially realized. One reason is that I believe there’s power in numbers. Telling my story in the language of the people and place that brought me up felt important. But this also felt very scary. I don’t want to speak generally, but in my hometown of Macon, Georgia, many people aren’t used to hearing the music they know and they love sung by people who are different in any way. I don’t know how many people in Macon have heard a country song sung by a lesbian. In a way, asking Julien to be part of this is an example of strength in numbers. It’s like saying, „I don’t want to do this alone, buddy.“ But then there’s the more obvious, I wanted friendship, I wanted to do this with somebody for the fun of it.

As a queer woman, I can relate to a queer country album. I wasn’t raised listening to this type of music, but it’s still significant because people like me haven’t been represented in it before, and now we are. However, I watched the Jimmy Fallon interview where he said, „Oh, it’s a queer country album.“ It’s contradictory to claim that space while also putting another word in front of it. In interviews, people — like myself — ask about it; it’s a topic of discussion on the record. Do you just accept it? Do you embrace it? It must be difficult to be in that position because it shouldn’t just be about that. It’s an album made by queer artists. It’s tricky.
I think about this a lot. You’re right on one hand. I don’t love it because it unintentionally pushes me, Julien, and the music into the margins. As you said, it’s another word. It’s similar to calling it „women’s music,“ which also happens to women in music. These identifiers seem useful to people creating content. This is not a dig. It’s an observation. It creates attention that might not exist if the album were just called a country album. I understand why the artists and the people talking and writing about the album are doing it. I don’t begrudge them that, but I wish the world were different. I maybe naively expected things to be different by now. Since the beginning of my career, I had really hoped to be an artist without any identifiers attached to me. That has always been my dream. I just want to release records and be recognized as an artist. But I can’t be that because, right now, people like Julien and I represent underrepresented and marginalized people. And that is positive. I’m happy to do that. I don’t want to create negativity around the idea of being called queer, but I wish we didn’t have to be politically situated the way we are. This is particularly true for us as Americans who are lesbians who just so happen to make a country album. Our music drums up interest in our identity, perhaps more than it would have if this album had come out five years ago when the country wasn’t in the state of crisis it is in now. Maybe people wouldn’t care if we’re queer.

Let’s discuss the sonic vision in more detail. You mentioned changing a few things along the way. Country is a broad genre. How did you approach it?
Julien and I listened to different types of country music while growing up. Right from the beginning, our points of reference were slightly different. So, we sent each other songs. Initially, we made a playlist to make sure we understood each other’s vision. It was easy to come to a consensus about the range of country music we wanted to explore. The songs turned out exactly as we had hoped. Initially, we both really wanted to make something slick. We didn’t want it to sound like we went to Nashville with session dudes who played played and we sang perfectly. We didn’t want it to be a soulless Music Row Nashville record. However, we did have the idea that it would be heavily produced, with trap drums that were super heavy. It’s the kind of record you could play in a club. We had this idea, and it actually ended up being exactly us, but with more of an outlaw country ’70s background. We discussed it, and ultimately we accomplished what we wanted to. As always, though, the sound of the album turned out differently than we expected.

You’re about to go on an extended tour. What was the process of translating the material into a live show like? Did you have to go back to the material, dissect it, and put it back together in a new way?
We did! There’s something really fun about playing these songs, in a way that is new for me. There isn’t even a click track. The drummer just counts us off. Then, we just play. There are no tracks at all. There are no electronics. I’m not disparaging those things; I use them all in my solo project and find them fun and helpful. However, playing with a band, having things be off the cuff, and being extremely in the moment is very freeing. We haven’t played many shows yet, but the ones we have played have felt different for that reason. This is also the largest group of people I’ve ever had on stage with me. This is a big band in the classic country style. Everyone gets their spotlight, and it’s just so much fun. Of course, it’s always hard work to come up with a stage production and create a live experience that people will really enjoy. But it’s also extremely fun.