“I’m no desert flower, I can take a little more rain,” sing indie darlings Julien Baker and Torres (aka Mackenzie Ruth Scott) on Send a Prayer My Way. This lovingly crafted outlaw country album has been on their minds for almost a decade; the two solo artists met in 2016, when a pre-Boygenius fame Baker sidled up to Scott with a bag of weed after one of her gigs.
The two lesbians from Tennessee wanted to reckon with their conflicted relationship to the conservative-associated soundtrack of the American South. But their plans were put on the back burner until the pandemic (and a stoned call from Scott) got things cooking. Now, they’ve set up camp with elegant fiddles, sun-dappled mandolins, banjos, expansive pedal steel guitars and the occasional herd of rattling drums.
