Free Range - Lost And Found [LP]

On the indie-folk and rock project Free Range's debut LP Practice (which earned praise from Pitchfork, Paste, and the Chicago Reader), frontperson Sofia Jensen chronicled the tumultuousness of growing up - and their sophomore album Lost & Found is about the logical next step of trying to feel like an adult. Much of the subject matter on Lost & Found stems from the 21-year-old Jensen, who formed Free Range when they were 15, moving out from their parents' house and meeting more people in the Chicago music scene. Amid these changes, Jensen experienced feelings common in one's early twenties but pervasive throughout adulthood: Striving for connection even when you're surrounded by people, and struggling to be emotionally open. "You tell me to be honest / and that's what I find the hardest," Jensen sings in their signature under-the-breath softness on "Conditions" - this lyric could be the album's thesis. On "Faith," atop gentle guitar strums and fingerpicking, they quietly vent, "It's not like I choose my fears / There's nothing worse than running from a mirror." They can't control what scares them, whether in connection or otherwise, but they're determined to put in the work to accept themselves. They're figuring out who they are and how to share themselves, a process that continues throughout adulthood. Jensen demoed most of Lost & Found in October 2023 in Silsbee, Texas, where producer Tommy Read, his sister Hannah Read (a.k.a. Lomelda), and Eric Adams of Acre Memos helped Jensen whittle down 50 songs to a batch of 15. To record these songs, Jensen returned in January 2024 with the full Free Range band: bassist Bailey Minzenberger, drummer Jack Henry, and new member Andy Krull on pedal steel. Later, in April 2024, Jensen went to Silsbee solo again to record "Conditions" and "Big Star," which they'd written within the prior few months, whereas they first wrote some Lost & Found songs before finishing Practice. For Lost & Found, Jensen took inspiration from their longtime favorite musician, Elliott Smith - particularly that Smith's Either/Or is mostly, as Jensen puts it, "rock songs played on acoustic instruments." "Hardly" and "Concept," though, are full-on overdriven electric guitar barn-burners and on the latter in particular, there's some new and exciting bite to Jensen's typically reserved singing. It's the sound of a prodigy cutting their teeth in real time. As for new musical influences, Jensen names Townes Van Zandt: "His lyrics showed me that you could be earnest and still be taken seriously," they say. "He's saying things so plainly but really beautifully.... It would feel so simple and obvious, and I was like, 'Why can't I write [like] that?'" Jensen's move toward this directness is clearest on the piano-and-acoustic number "Lost and Found." Amid fully scene-setting images of sidewalk chalk, aimless driving in a parking lot, and blaring firetrucks, Jensen beckons the object of their affection to be vulnerable so that they can do the same: "You show me all of your doubts / I tell you all of what I was singing about." They place you right in the backseat of their car as they beg to connect across an insurmountable distance no matter the pain. You're up close and personal with their embrace of adulthood's emotional strife. "If you want to find what you're looking for," Jensen says of "Lost and Found," "you have to get in there, you have to go up close, you have to experience things, you have to get hurt, and you have to take risks." That's exactly what they do as they open up across Lost & Found, and they emerge more fully formed than ever before.