Ever feel that intense, replete sense of joy? Like everything is right with your life and you wouldn’t change a thing? Like you’re both giddy and also slightly anxious that anything could have a butterfly effect and knock your fullness off-balance? So you’re not going to take anything for granted—no regrets—and let it ride, not because you have nothing to lose but because you’ve got everything and you want the feeling to never fade? That’s the fuel behind Torres‘ Thirstier.

The fifth album by rock singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott (following 2020’s Silver Tongue) is her most sonically bombastic, most jubilant, power-chord-filled work to date. Although Torres’ lyricism has been more difficult to decipher before, on Thirstier she’s brimming with love, joy and pride.

“The more of you I drink, the thirstier I get, baby,” Scott sings on the title track. While there are several variations of love talked about on the album and it’s not always easy to tell them apart, the predominant form is of the romantic variety. Torres is so in love that she can’t enough of her girlfriend (who painted Scott for the cover). Scott wrote and recorded during the pandemic, but rather than focusing on anxiety or fear, she focused on the happiness she found during the Big Pause.

Thirstier has two other hallmarks; the allusions to water and the boldness in the instrumentation, which for the most part features the type of wall-of-sound guitar action that’s been underused since the ’90s. Both are purposeful and effective.

“For awhile I was sinkin’ but from here on out I swear I’m swimmin,” Scott sings on “Don’t Go Puttin Wishes in My Head,” the second track on the album, a driving, uptempo song that acts as both a banger and a ballad. The major chord melody is a bold statement that follows the more traditionally Torres opener, “Are You Sleepwalking?” Scott’s vocals here share equal billing with the arrangement as she changes her intonation on the chorus: “I know promisin’ forever’s not your thing/ But now if you don’t want me to go dreamin’/Don’t spend your mornings and your evenings in my bed/ If you don’t want me believin that you’re never gonna leave me, darlin’.”

The skittering, many-beats-per-minute “Constant Tommowland” follows. This song alternates between the hyper percussion, acoustic guitar strumming and an extended pregnant pause. “It’s not that we’re there but we’ve nearly arrived,” Scott sings of her love. “A future before us of highest design/ Water of life will flow from me to you/ Take my hand, let’s step into the light.”

There’s that water reference in its more literal sense: water brings life. This leads directly into “Drive Me.” On this song Scott sings of her partner—or the power of love—pushing her to be a better version of herself.

The opening verse: “Drive me to the water/ Drive me up the wall/ Drive me by the collarbones/ Drive me to stand tall/ Drive me to do the things I never thought I’d do/ Drive me to keep choosing to eat the fruit.” Oh my.

These words are paired with a melody reminiscent of Garbage or Collective Soul—somewhat distorted, crunchy and shimmering. “Drive Me” is so humid that it’s steaming. Scott says her love is, “Sweeter than juice/ Better than a muse/ Burns slower than a fuse/ Wetter than a feedback loop.”

At times, the guitar playing on the album is scuzzier and more distorted (“Hug From a Dinosaur”) and there are softer, quieter moments between the bombast (parts of the title track, “Big Leap”). The latter third also has a couple of drum-machine-led cuts (“Kiss the Corners,” “Keep the Devil Out”) that on a microscopic level seemingly don’t fit the rest of the sonic through line, but taken as a whole they provide the variety to keep the album moving forward.

Torres jarringly concludes the album with the latter song in a moment of unease, but then again, what is thirst if not a desire for more, more, more.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.