"Heather, I'm sorry that your mother/Diseased in the brain/Cannot recall your name/Heather, I dreamt that I forgave/But that only comes in waves/I hate you all the same." It's hard not to be immediately intrigued by such a brutally cold introduction, delivered with a quiet sneer over a sparse, brooding guitar line. Where Torres' debut coasted on a similarly subdued energy throughout, Sprinter wastes no time accelerating into aggressive rock, howling and distorted. By the end of opener "Strange Hellos," Mackenzie Scott is practically screaming, her voice raw and unhinged as she spits accusingly, "What's mine isn't really yours/But I hope you find what you're looking for." It's representative of an album that rages as much as it reflects and is as darkly humorous as it is subtly devastating. Sprinter is extroverted introversion - an intensely personal song cycle blasted through a loudspeaker - and a startlingly confident musical statement.

Much of Sprinter is certainly as hard-edged and blistering as its opening track. The best song in this vein is probably "New Skin," an unflinchingly honest exploration of the conflict between burgeoning self-identity and religious upbringing. Scott's weary rasp battles hard to maintain dominance, pushing steadfastly through a thick wall of feedback-heavy guitars to proclaim, "I am a tired woman/In January, I will just be twenty-three/In Kansas City, I was/Undressed and bested by an air-tight floor/Then it said, 'By the power in me vested'/And wrapped me in this new skin I'm dying for." However, there is also a fair share of experimentation: "Son, You Are No Island" builds suspensefully from a trembly, ominous beginning into a cataclysmic ending in which Scott threatens, her vocals cycling in on themselves, "Son, you're not a man yet/You fucked with a woman who would know." There's also the simmering, seductive "A Proper Polish Welcome," which I've already written at length about, so I'll just say that it's one of the best songs I heard in 2015, period.

However, lately, I've found myself most drawn to the album's more expansive and tender moments, "Ferris Wheel" and "The Exchange," both seven-minute ballads that feel like they simultaneously expand indefinitely and pass by in a flash. "Ferris Wheel" is a warbly ode to romantic missteps that's as self-deprecatingly hilarious ("You don't like me/You just like my ride") as it is achingly lonely ("There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do/To show you that I've got the sadness, too"). Comparatively, "The Exchange" is even more minimal, only an acoustic guitar, voice, and the faint murmur of chirping birds. It revolves around the experiences of Scott and her mother, both adopted, as they wrestle with the identity crises created by the unknowability of their origins. In the first verse, Scott's mother finds out that her adoption papers have been destroyed in a flood, "an entire family tree, an eternal privacy, underwater." Later, Scott herself grapples with her fear of the future - "I am afraid to see my heroes age/I am afraid of disintegration" - before breaking down into the wounded admission, "Mother, father/I'm underwater/And I don't think you can pull me out of this."

On a purely emotional level, there's probably only one other album on this list (and it has not appeared yet, for what it's worth) that feels like as much of a sucker punch as Sprinter does. From a technical standpoint, it may not be particularly impressive or innovative, but I can't imagine any other musical style fitting Scott's bluntly confrontational lyrics so well: the occasional messiness of it, all of those tiny imperfections, are what make it so affecting. It's hard to stand out in the singer-songwriter game these days, but Scott's willingness to expose the unfiltered, often ugly truth, even about herself, easily puts her at the front of the pack.