Torres At The Earl, Atlanta, July 1, 2015

Wednesday evening, a rainy and humid night in Georgia, and we're back once again at The Earl.

Last night's headliner was Torres, who we'll get to shortly, because the opener was the Athens-born, now Atlantan, singer/songwriter Madeline, who played a great set of intriguing psychedelic folk songs that had the notoriously noisy Earl crowd, who are especially noisy during opening sets by singer/songwriters, so quiet you could've heard the proverbial pin drop at times.

Here's a pretty good sampler of Madeline's music from a set at the 40 Watt Club.  Last night, she had a different bass player and performed without a drummer.

Next up was long-time Atlanta band The Preakness, who played a carefully curated set list that gradually took them from slow-core emo to frantic punk over the course of 40 or so minutes.

The headliner was Torres, who's originally from Macon, Georgia but moved to Brooklyn some time back to pursue her music.  She announced during last night's set that this was as close to a home-coming show as she's likely to play, and that her parents were in the audience.

We've seen Torres before, opening for Okkervil River at Variety Playhouse back in 2013, a show that made our 10 Best for the year, and since that time she's released a new album, the serious Album Of The Year contender, Sprinter.

Mackenzie Scott has a quality to her voice, barely hinted at in recordings, that can cut right through you like a knife.  It's half strangulated scream and half intense vibrato (listen at the 7:30 mark in the video for an example of what I mean), and once that voice catches you, it impales you to the wall and pins you there for as long as she wants.  It's not as unpleasant an experience as I've described, and when it gets too intense, she can resort to a neat alto and even reach up to the soprano range at times.
The set opened up with an extended version of Son, You Are No Island, which was so captivating that if it lasted for her entire set, it would not have disappointed me.  Other highlights included A Proper Polish Welcome, Sprinter (which she played in the middle of the set and didn't make us wait until the end to play), and New Skin, as well as other songs who's titles I can't recall.

This was one of those nights when The Earl kept the stage lights dim, providing great atmospherics for the performance but making picture-taking difficult.

The set was a pretty direct, no-nonsense affair without too much stage banter to get in the way of the music but not so little so as to make her seem aloof (after all, this was a home-coming show with her parents in attendance).  In short, it was a near-perfect set, possible performance of the year material, and a show I won't soon forget.