All Ages
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Jensen McRae could've been down for the count.
"The most profound choices of my life,” she says, “have often felt like things I did before I was ready to do, and I had to grow into them.” McRae’s songs have a way of giving shape to these leaps, cliff jumps and trust falls, and on her new album, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, Jensen McRae goes further than ever, evolving from a promising young artist to a fully grown songwriter and star. “It’s about realizing what you can’t outrun, and what follows when you have withstood what you thought might crush you,” she explains. “There are things that can happen to us—unthinkable, untenable things—that threaten our safety in our own bodies. They happen, and you feel like the only option is escape. In truth, the only way out is in—back into the place you have always lived.” The home – with Jensen front-and-center, possibly leaving, possibly arriving – adorns the artwork for I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!”. “You can leave the city, you can leave the lover,” McRae continues, “but you can never leave yourself.”
From the very beginning, fans have fallen in love with Jensen McRae for the sharp, evocative and clear-eyed songwriting. An avid journaler, McRae has been breathlessly documenting her existence since she was 18. Her first album, Are You Happy Now?, was a mission statement for the artist who grew up an automatic outsider: a Black Jewish girl from Los Angeles, hellbent on making folk music in spite of the world's attempts to box her into other, more stereotypically Black genres. McRae looked to her songwriting heroes (Alicia Keys, Carole King, James Taylor, Stevie Wonder) to build a sonic world all her own. As her audience grew and with myriad doors began unlocking, it "became the record of my coming-of-age. But it was a quiet coming-of-age, one that mostly took place inside my own head."
I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! takes place against the backdrop of romantic turbulence and McRae's rapidly growing audience. "I had never been in love before," McRae said, "not really. And then I had two life-altering relationships back to back in my early twenties. This album is primarily an exploration about how love and intimacy knock the wind out of you, can take your legs out from under you." She has also had multiple viral moments; the most recent was in 2023, when McRae posted a solo verse and chorus online, little more than a piece of a demo, and it took off. Covers, duets, and an avalanche of new fans followed (including the likes of Justin Bieber, Stormzy, and Dan Nigro to name a few); the song was the beginning of "Massachusetts" , which would become her first Dead Oceans release.
I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! also reaffirms McRae’s defiance of expectations, as she deepens her singer-songwriter bona fides and claims space for young Black women in the genre. "I do still feel like I’m pushing a boulder up a hill,” she says. "I know that in spite of my success and hard work, I still do hit walls that aren't there for other people, and that it's because I'm working in a space that doesn't already allow for people who look like me. It’s connected to why I make music,” she continues, “to be seen and to help others feel seen. But I remain somewhat misunderstood."
McRae's voice expertly embodies both the heartbreak of being left and of doing the leaving. On top of her excellent songwriting, McRae simply has an exceptional, acrobatic voice. Wispy and textured at times, clear and bright at others, McRae’s singing is surprising and multidimensional in much the same way as her lyrics. When the country-adjacent stealth single “Savannah” hits its crescendo, for example, it’s clear McRae is an artist with her own singular power, as piano layers with guitar and McRae delivers a series of scathing indictments with grit and conviction: "You swore you'd raise our kids to end up just like you / well you're a false prophet / and that's a goddamn promise." "Let Me Be Wrong" is a buoyant ode to rejecting perfectionism. Built on a simple melody and acoustic guitar, it grows step over step; guitars layer, drums pick up the pace, and when McRae growls “fuck those girls got everything” it’s a punch of both power and vulnerability, begging to be shouted in unison with the biggest possible crowd.
The comparatively mellow but completely wrenching "Daffodils" explores the softer side of McRae’s singing, while lines like “he cleaned my clock / he bought me daffodils” bring the album’s juxtapositions into devastating focus. It is, by McRae’s own admission, “one of the most emotionally brutal lines on the album.” In fact "Daffodils" and "Tuesday" dive into the album's heaviest themes --specifically, substance abuse and assault--and how slowly those particular dangers sink in when they're brewing in an intimate partner. “Mother Wound” explores how an emotionally unavailable person can warp your ideas about love, as McRae sings “loving you lowered my expectations” over a steady, deliberate march of drums and piano.
Amidst all this I Don't Know How But They Found Me! finds ways to let the light in. Album opener "The Rearranger" shimmers with a nostalgic gleam, even as it suggests trouble in paradise. "Novelty" is "a situationship anthem," in McRae's words, an infectious testament to the enduring allure of the one that got away. And even before the viral closer, "Massachusetts," the penultimate "Praying For Your Downfall" oozes snark and charm, cutting down a lover who's no longer worth the ill will she once wished for him. It also marks McRae’s transformation into self-assuredness, looking back at broken-heartedness but from a new, more sure-footed and powerful vantage point. McRae ventured to North Carolina to record I Don't Know How But They Found Me! with Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Suki Waterhouse, Bon Iver), also enlisting the help of Hippocampus's Nathan Stocker on guitar, Bon Iver's Matthew McCaughan on drums, and her younger brother, Holden McRae, on keys. "It felt like summer camp. None of us wanted to leave," McRae said. "It was such a joyous ten days of pure creative expression." In the process, I Don't Know How But They Found Me! found its footing--a vibrating, urgent collection of songs moored by razor-sharp lyrical specificity and timeless pop melodies.
The unusual title of her second album? Taken from a line in McRae's favorite film, Back to the Future. A key protagonist survives a hail of bullets, and the image resonated with McRae. “I really connected with the idea that I could've easily collapsed beneath the weight of what happened to me, but I didn't. I didn't even know it,” McRae says, “but I was bulletproof the whole time."
