Audio By Carbonatix
Keep Westword Free
We’re aiming to raise $20,000 by April 26. Your support ensures Westword can continue watching out for you and our community. No paywall. Always accessible. Daily online and weekly in print.
The music on Out of Harm’s Way isn’t just all over the map — the CD sports enough twists and turns for an entire atlas. But if singer-songwriter Nicole Torres’s feverish eclecticism makes for an inconsistent listening experience, her meanderings are never less than interesting, and her best moments are considerably better than that.
The disc starts slowly due to the middling jazz-folk arrangement applied to “Complicated Life.” However, “How Could You (Act II),” with its weird, flamenco-derived strumming and accusatory lyrics, leaves a mark, “Kind of Kind” rocks convincingly, and “Impotent Dragon” finds Torres delivering agitated poetry with all the attitude of a pissed-off rapper. And if “Closing Credits/Gratitude,” in which the star of the show thanks everyone she’s ever met (and plenty of people she hasn’t) over nearly eight minutes, is massively self-indulgent, it’s also kind of endearing, in a totally eccentric way.
Even when Torres doesn’t seem to know where she’s going, she finds her Way.
