FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 13, 2015 (Madison WI) – Where rasp meets twang, where badass meets bleeding heart, there you’ll find Jessie Torrisi. The Philadelphia-born, Austin-based, and NYC-vetted singer-songwriter is anything but settled down on her new release fronting the Please Please Me, Year of the Horse, out October 13 on Slothtrop. Year of the Horse is the follow-up to Torrisi’s solo 2009 release, Bruler Bruler, and 2013’s Shake A Little Harder EP released with the Please Please Me. Torrisi’s range as a musician is already impressive, and her extensive background as a drummer shows in her immaculate sense of rhythm, which backs careful lyrics. And then there’s that voice. “I get compared to PJ Harvey and Patti Smith… I’m going to guess it’s my Italian NY attitude. There’s a bit of fierceness and punk rock mojo there — a toughness in the vulnerability,” Torrisi says.
She sums up this release as “heart-on-sleeve with a lot of hope and a little bit of sass.” She explains that Year of the Horse “is about 2014, which was a year of doom for me. I got terrible insomnia, had a band I was in fall apart, and then ended a 6-year relationship. It was “year of the horse” according to the Chinese calendar, and that year is notorious for jerking you around. The songs were an attempt to be strong in the face of struggle, or find strength in places I didn’t know I had it and pull myself through.”
She channels that strength through steely honesty. The first track “Fuck This,” is the lead single (with a radio edit). Torrisi describes it as her “love song to sad songs” and says she was tired of other musicians feigning constant happiness on social media. The song itself is a slow-burn, a girl who’s quickly getting bored with the party around her.
Though Torrisi is committed to emotional honesty, she doesn’t sacrifice musical merit in order to maintain it. Her cover of Freedy Johnston’s “Bad Reputation” is a standout here, a rendering that is dark in a universal way. Says Torrisi of it, “The words are so much darker than the music lets on. So I decided to try a moody version of it. It started with the drum loop, which I made in my bedroom after buying myself a Roland drumpad for Christmas. That song has that thing where it’ll sound great no matter which way you twist it. I kind of approached it like a woman about to go over a cliff.”
Year of the Horse was recorded at Frenchie Smith’s The Bubble in Austin. Smith also produced the record “Frenchie is diehard about making the magic happen in the moment, not in the editing,” says Torrisi. The recording captures a live feel, the songs moving forward on their own momentum, the live and electronic elements blending to a dreamy pulse.
Year of the Horse will be out on Slothtrop October 13, 2015. It can be purchased digitally via iTunes or at http://www.slothtrop.com.