torc

Torc have made a beautiful few songs here. Marlo Renee Freeman's vocals are soft and sweet, yet can be powerful when the song calls for it.

Torc's music is lyrical, laidback and classic chill out. It's brilliant with what it sets out to achieve. - Natasha Bright

torc are a three-piece with vocalist Marlo, bassist Ken Crotty and guitarist Fran Long. Their first E.P. ‘Grace’ contains songs with a unique sound of peaked guitars and sensual vocals, a mix of soul, funk, jazz, pop, and dance. Rather than simply listening to the four tracks you feel them. There is something exceptional and special about Marlo’s splendid and powerful voice, the deeply touching bass lines, and thespiky guitars. In addition the lyrics are socio-critical, dicey and dark.
The opener ‘Black & Blue’ is the most soulful track with a clear and echoing guitar that makes you swingalong to the sad and hearfelt vocals.
The haunting atmosphere of the title track ‘Grace’ puts you right into a mystery novel with a sensual touch produced by the minimalist guitar work and the emotive vocals. ‘Tea & Sympathy’ (what a brilliant song title!) stands out as a pop song with up-tempo beats, electronic sound effects, shrill violins, and a nice guitar solo accompanied by low wind instruments. ‘Broken Angel’ sounds and feels like an anthem for social change with touching lyrics and an amazing in two voices interlude.
‘Grace’ is a soulful, emotional, graceful, and powerful E.P. which won’t let you go for a while. Sarah (L.E.G.) - eightball magazine

Like Warhol's revolutionary sounding group from the 60's, torc shapes and flirts with bold questions and dark and honest truths that turn down suspicious corners, peek behind thick and private walls, and lead you around unsuspecting bends that just never seem to quite go away. Their very unique modern sound centers around a magnificent, bold and blue-blooded partied-out voice that flaunts and demurely teases, and that perfectly suits their own musically fascinating, distraught and narcotically estranged character; and then dares you to follow along on their very different kind of reality ride. Their music is apt to amp you up a bit, but not likely to let you down

Posted by Magic Potion on Noisehead.com - Noisehead.com

torc... (remember that name) is high class Rock n Roll fusion that rumbles in an upper class all its own.

Like messengers on royal horseback escorting a carriage ride with destiny, they deliver you your personal apocalyptic mail stamped in gold, while showing a complete lack of contempt for exposing your lifetime of failures and illusions...

with lyrics that hang on impending inescapables... with an industrious sound that clinks and growls and spurts and spews toward a heavenly part of hell to accentuate their perfectly disenchanted themes... and with a vocalist who commands your attention with her divinely narcotic touch of 'se la vie.'

Ogres, rogues and princes alike are not spared their biting commentary that is so eloquently delivered and yet so elegantly thrashed about.

In the past I've likened this 'tour de force' to a modern day "Velvet Underground," but their music is so much more. Containing elements of the Doors, Procol Harum, Hendrix, and even of Dylan in his deepest and darkest moods, I believe torc is on its way to becoming a fashionable "Underground" sensation! With songs like 'Illium', 'Grace', 'To have and to hold' and 'Black and Blue' among others, along with (what I think is their supreme musical knockout) 'Tea and Sympathy', their combination of elements:
high-torc driving sound... depth of meaningful and subtly scorching lyrics that haunt and consort with both the heart and the inevitable payback... intriguing melody and style (yes, they actually write melodies, and good ones!)... and an utterly forlorn but acute sense of another slice of life... is simply... well... irresistible!

I've also been privileged to hear some of torc's "live tracks," and they sound just as good live on stage (or even better) as they do in their studio recordings; something that cannot be said but for a small percentage of Artists playing this type of music.

Oh, it's NOT for everyone. You may not like their brand of Rock n Roll OR their subject matter (and it may even be lethal if it should happen to hit home) but theirs is a "specialty brand" of music that every decade or so sneaks out... to infringe on your overly-extended self worth and immoral privacy (along with the locked-box secrets and skeletons you keep in your closet). They are, in a nutshell, an alluring form of musical entrapment full of junkyard castles, broken hearts and unseemly imminent temptation. And I'll say it again... from 'my' musical perspective, I think torc is revolutionary, and at the cutting edge of sophisticated "Underground Thrash and Rock n Roll!" - Magic Potion - Noisehead.com

'Torc bring a touch of sophistication to their musical adventures...with snazzy guitars and an impressive vocal' Jackie Hayden - Hot Press March 2009 - Hot Press