Following 12 songs of mostly furious strumming and dense, often politically charged lyrics, Vanessa Torres seems to finally let herself relax with the closing “Live Again,” on her brand-new sophomore disc, Witness. On what’s already a very personal album, the finish makes the piece of art itself seem a living, breathing thing. It has exhausted itself, tired of things that are combative and furious, and resigned itself to the most natural and straightforward of metaphors, as it nears its final spin (and maybe quietly prays someone’s left the player on repeat?).
“If I could live again, I’d be a tree,” Torres sings, quiet like a lullaby, “Hold my arms out to the wind gracefully/I’d be something strong and silent/My story kept for me/If I could live again I’d be a tree.” Or a bird. Or an iris. She wishes she could wear forgiveness all year ’round. And for these simplest of sentiments, we hear for the first time on the album a crisp, clean piano, just before we’re told, “If I had time enough for just one song/Then I’d play this until the morning came along.”
We must come to the conclusion that Torres feels herself compelled to deliver all that came before this tune, songs of anger, ache, and somber love, as though they were things to get off her chest before being called to the great carpet in the sky.
It would have been hard for her to have crafted a nicer-sounding way of doing it. Guided by producer David Goodrich, who last year helped make Moses Atwood’s debut disc something of a revelation, Torres has delivered an interesting and textured instrumentation, augmenting folk’s staples — a crisp voice and an acoustic guitar — with sounds as organic as an old-timey banjo and exotic as a shakuhachi flute, with just a touch of grumbling electric guitar from Goodrich (he plays that piano, too).
She gets great help, too, from sister Tamara, whose backing vocals sometimes recall the Indigo Girls in an atmosphere that often feels that way anyway. In a take on the old spiritual “Ain’t No Grave” that would have been at home on Rites of Passage, Tamara punctuates a heavy sentiment, “So come river take me/Won’t you bring me to my knees,” with a perfectly tortured cry. Later, in “Listening,” her round-like delivery is a perfect companion to the line, “There’s an echo in the darkness and I’m listening.”
That tune also contains the line, “Let’s take a long drink to magic happening,” and you’ve got to make sure you’re down with that kind of sentiment before investing your time in Vanessa Torres. There really isn’t a throwaway tune here. Everything is big and important and often pretty involved. The opening “Bluest of Valleys” is a place where “the old kings of Memphis have all lost their crowns.” Then the title track is “Witness” to “a suicide jumper about to take flight/Bombs are splitting open/Lebanon, Palestine.”
“Love Some More”? Yeah, “this isn’t political, it’s personal/You can call this your crusade/Now go ahead, wage your little war.” Why would someone want to do that? Well, “Boy Scouts don’t trust me with their kids.”
So, these definitely aren’t pop songs, but I wonder if Torres couldn’t look to a band like those Indigo Girls and the way they embraced a really great hook as she develops her sound. The choir should really dig this album, for both message and melody, but a bit of fun here and there could draw in outsiders.
Or go the other way, and get hyper-literary. Though there are a lot of good lyrics here, only a few get beyond the predictable and show some real wit, especially since Torres often eschews the perfect rhyme in her couplets. “My Little Man” has a couple of great turns, though. “Barely 15 years old, he’s got a cynical mind/He’s used up eight lives because he was told he might get nine” — that’s a great couplet. Later, we’re told “he’s a cracked mirror showing off what’s broken in our lives.” What a visceral image.
Her take on the old “When the Levee Breaks” is a gut-check, too. The Memphis Minnie tune couldn’t be more perfect for a take on Katrina, and Torres uses the experience of her time down there to fuel what’s already a great song with anger and disappointment: “There’s no safety in poverty/We don’t run this government/We don’t trust in the police/When there’s a flood that comes to take you away/You just dig your heels in, cuz there’s no help on its way.”
Torres has dug her heels in here and made something that is neither safe nor trusting.