Jensen McRae - I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! 

Ever since the release of her stand-out ‘Who Hurt You?’ EP back in 2021, Jensen McRae has been marked out as a special songwriter. Even in that early foray, the Californian managed to effortlessly distil an array of powerful emotions into its six tracks in a way that felt, in moments, truly heartbreaking. So it feels more than apt that, for her Dead Oceans debut, she’s once again channelling that sense of crystalline intimacy. The follow-up to her more traditional coming-of-age album ‘Are You Happy Now?’, ‘I Don’t Know But They Found Me!’ finds her reflecting on her two most recent relationships and subsequent breakups, running the gamut of feeling in the process. 

Take the all-too-familiar naive optimism of ‘I Can Change Him’, the warm, hedonistic country twang of ‘Let Me Be Wrong’ (“Let me get lost, the hard way’s the way I want / And I’ve been good too long”) or the high-road taking ‘Praying For Your Downfall’; these are a set of songs that examine all the broken pieces of her love stories and point the finger in everyone’s direction. It’s the stunning ‘Tuesday’, though, that provides the most gut-wrenching moment; a raw, charged dive into betrayal that’s impossible not to be moved by, it’s a gorgeously deft example of Jensen’s capabilities.