Album Review: Jensen McRae, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!

The cover of I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! situates Jensen McRae against a backdrop of transformation, cradling a roll of bubble wrap and surrounded by moving boxes. The folk starlet makes it abundantly clear that she’s moving on, with a sprawling diaristic album to boot.

Driving a heavy force of heartbreak and rebuilding, I Don’t Know How finds the singer at the intersection where Taylor Swift’s Red and Joni Mitchell’s Blue collide.

A major highlight is ‘Let Me Be Wrong’, where McRae taps into the seedier side of heartbreak, as she debates calling up an ex-flame. “Something rotting in my brain”, she croons, “tells me do it anyway.” Indeed, the track reveals a grief arc in I Don’t Know How.

From the end-stage compromises of love in ‘The Rearranger’ to the moved-on memories of ‘Massachusetts’, the tone shifts as much as the singer’s self-belief does. But this doesn’t mean all love is lost.

“You set the bar, you’re gonna stick,” McRae sings on the last line of the album. She is not alone in being beholden to her own experience, but she’s also capable of bearing witness to it, viewing a relationship – even as it shrinks further and further in the rearview mirror – for what it was, rather than what it couldn’t be.

• Out now.