I don't know about you, but I'm a bit fatigued by the pivot to country. Country music's sounds and aesthetics have been infiltrating every corner of popular culture for the past five years or so, and I'm starting to think we've reached mass saturation — and we haven't even gotten Chappell Roan's or Lana Del Rey's incoming dispatches from the barnyard yet.
Sometimes though, a country pivot feels less like a pivot and more like a return home. These days, that's when country music's three chords and the truth can still feel vital. TORRES and Julien Baker are both southern kids, and they're both gay southern kids, an identity that can feel fraught even at the best of times.
The pair's debut single as a duo, "Sugar in the Tank," makes good on the promise of its premise. It's not a game changer in any sense, but it feels real and earned; co-produced by the pair alongside illuminati hottie's Sarah Tudzin, the song taps into the easy listening softness of boygenius and the slyly anthemic nature of TORRES's more sideways work. It's a bittersweet love song that makes you wanna drive straight out toward the canyon.
It goes down easy — almost too easy — but its golden-hour charm is undeniable, and the pair sound entirely at home surrounded by banjos and wailing pedal steel. If we keep getting songs like this one, I can maybe take a few more years of country claustrophobia.