Julien Baker and Torres had already teased out their collaboration live on stage and with a surprise appearance on The Tonight Show. Even with that preamble, there’s something about the official release of a single from the duo that locks the new team in as the real deal. One of the boygeniuses has a new lab partner.

It helps that the single in question, “Sugar in the Tank,” is arresting from its first moments. Rendered with a fine country twang, the cut conveys in its lyrics the overwhelming totality of falling for someone: “I love you clear as day and in the dark/ I love you sleeping on my dead left arm/ I love you all the time that I can get/ I love you now already, and not yet.” With Baker and Torres at the helm, there’s no way its going to be a simple love song, though. The lyrics also cop to a self-sabotaging hesitancy to give in entirely to the promised happiness: “I hate just watching through the window when you pull up/ And I’m still thinking I should stay home\/ Sitting outside with the engine running/ Just waiting on me to change.” The song is ravishing and bittersweet at the same time.

I’m planning to take a bit of a holiday break from this digital outpost of squirrelly opinions, returning after the first of the new year with the usual progression of retrospective falderal. And to all a good night!