Jensen McRae EP Review

The plainspoken songwriter's debut tells of young love and its uncertainty.

McRae has a resonant, changeable voice that suit the melodramatic and confessional modes she favours. Who Hurt You?, produced in full by Rahki (Kendrick Lamar, Jorja Smith, EarthGang), showcases this range with spare compositions that render McRae in focus. Across the brief record’s six songs, she sounds clear and confident even when she’s channeling confusion or ambivalence.

“Immune,” a track about a troubled couple that visits a COVID-19 mass vaccination site and buckles under the weight of these unprecedented times, is charmingly sentimental. “What will we say to each other/When the needle goes in?/What will we be to each other/If the world doesn’t end?” McRae belts with dewy-eyed fear. The song began as a winking Twitter homage to Phoebe Bridgers, one of McRae’s influences, but the completed version goes full melodrama.

“Wolves” is more hushed, turning brushes with predatory men into a mournful fable. The song makes deft use of negative space, lapsing into silence between McRae’s downcast lyrics as a lone guitar melody flickers in the background. “Thank God women learned to whisper/But I crave a microphone,” she says, sounding both relieved and ashamed.

McRae is at her best when she’s plainspoken, committed to being immediate rather than literary. “White Boy,” a song about being erased, is artfully one-sided. McRae describes a white companion ignoring her with disarming precision. “White girl arrives/I turn invisible/I don’t like/Who I am to you,” she sings in a near sob, shrinking into herself. The song is less a confrontation and more an epiphany, McRae’s character stumbling into lucidity. As McRae finds her footing as a songwriter, that ability to burrow into the core of an idea or scene will be key to expanding the casts of her tiny dramas and giving those ambient shadows depth.