Feel No Evil

EDITORIAL REVIEWS
21 year-old songwriter Tessa Torrence is a survivor with an unimaginable childhood. A heroin addict by the age of 12, Tessa began writing to help herself through years of abuse, abandonment and heavy drug use. Now six years clean, she confronts her story on Feel No Evil (August 20th/ F&A/MRI/RED). Music writer Bud Scoppa calls it a 'smart, visceral rock and roll record that builds on the sturdy foundations laid by the Velvets, Stones and Bowie, loaded with ringing guitars, pile driving drums and explosive choruses.'


'I m very much a believer in that if you want something you have to work your ass off for it,' says Tessa. 'And that s what I ve tried to do.' At 10, she began writing and never stopped.('I kept so much inside that I felt I couldn't let out, so I just wrote and I wrote in journals, on napkins, scrap paper, scribbles never necessarily intending anyone to read or listen to any of it.')


At 16, she began performing around her hometown of Austin, where she started a midnight residency at Saxon Pub, backed by members of Fitz and the Tantrums and sidemen for John Fogerty and Alejandro Escovedo. Her father, Kurt Neumann of the BoDeans, became her musical collaborator, bringing a combination of unleashed power and emotional supportiveness to his guitar performances that recalls the work of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter on Lou Reed s Rock N' Roll Animal, or James Honeyman-Scott on the first Pretenders album, to which Feel No Evil bears a distinct resemblance.



Produced, engineered and mixed by Kurt with additional mixing by Chris Lord-Alge, and mastered by the legendary Bob Ludwig, Feel No Evil glistens, and the surrounding instrumental work is often ferocious in its intensity.



You can hear this still-young artist's maturation from one of the album's earliest recordings, 'Love Is Dead, Sunshine,' whose multi-tracked harmonies sounded like the work of a Disney starlet in some parallel universe, to the most recent, 'Breathe, Don't Leave,' which is reminiscent of Lucinda Williams at her most stoically devastating. Several tracks 'Did to You,' 'The Way It Moved,' 'I'll B Ur LUVR' (which bears the sinister, insistent pulse of Tom Petty s 'You Got Lucky') and 'Ten Cent Pistol' sound like shredding lost classics from the early '70s or the early '90s, for that matter). And the rat-a-tat recited verses of '8th St. Hustle' recalls 'People Who Died' from Jim Carroll, another childhood victim turned grown-up rock poet.


'Through it all, music and writing have been my therapy,' says Tessa. 'I feel lucky and blessed every day that I was able get through earth-shattering, horrific experiences, to overcome things I never thought I could overcome and to make this music.'



'It all started simply enough with one idea: FUN!' says Kurt. 'High energy, big guitars and drums. 'You don t know nothing. about anything.' 'Love is Dead, Sunshine.'


'As Tessa brought new, more heartbreaking, lyrics to me, I found myself looking for more beautiful, aching music, Music that could stand the weight of what she was talking about. I still struggle with how it's even possible that I missed it all. But by putting this music together with Tessa, maybe somehow I could be part of the healing.'

Number of Discs: 1

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