Not everything is quite so grim. After “Daffodils” comes “Let Me Be Wrong,” a buoyant anthem for recovering Type As on which McRae captures the striver’s greatest fear (“Somеthing twisted in my chest/Says I’m good but not the best”) and releases it to the wind (“When I was young, that knocked me out/But nothing really shakes me now”). Strummy and sunlit, it could sit comfortably between “Wide Open Spaces” and “Standing Still” on a road trip playlist—an example of the bright, nostalgic pop palette McRae deploys across the album to help counterbalance its weightier material.
It’s impossible to get lost on I Don’t Know How, because Jensen is always dropping a pin: She’s speeding down Sunset Boulevard, on a flight to Georgia, in a bachelor pad in Shoreditch. Scene-setting is a core tenet of her craft, and a fitting technique for the story she’s telling. First or foundational heartbreak presents a paradox: It happens to everyone, but when it happens to you, it feels uniquely agonizing. Seeding her narrative with specifics is how McRae lays claim to it—this is no generic heartbreak, it is hers. At the same time, she cheekily uses details to signpost something more universal. That the wayward subject of “I Can Change Him” wears cheap cologne and hand rolls his cigarettes is hardly a surprise, and when McRae mentions “navy bed sheets” on the excellent morning-after missive “Novelty,” we know exactly what kind of guy she’s been spending the night with.
Such documentary instincts can make for dense lyrics. Yet the clarity and conviction with which Jensen sings draws your focus to every word. Her voice is expressive and pliable—soft and drifting one moment, grooved and throaty the next—and she seems to chew on each phrase that passes her lips, savoring it, making it sound irresistible. Only occasionally does she go overboard, as on “Tuesday,” a maudlin piano ballad where she invokes Judas and Brutus (a near-perfect rhyme, those bastards) to capture her own feelings of betrayal. Compared to the song’s relatively muted arrangement, McRae’s theatrical vocal performance here feels overwrought.
“Tuesday” drags down the back half’s batting average. So does closer “Massachusetts,” a relationship retrospective that largely amounts to an inventory of McRae’s ex’s property—a novelty ashtray, his guitars, preferred beers, and video games. The song’s glut of personally identifying details stemmed from a Swift-inspired songwriting exerciseshe’s said—but perhaps she overcommitted to the assignment. In theory, her approach gets at the random but indelible memories that stick around far longer than the people we share them with. And individual lyrics, like the line about co-opted turns of phrase (“I wonder if your tongue is turning over anything I used to say”), are strong. But the song’s overall effect is of insularity, as if it was written for an audience of one—the only other person who could understand the deeper significance of the specifics.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings