On the indie-folk and rock project Free Range’s 2023 debut LP Practice (which earned praise from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and the Chicago Reader), frontperson Sofia Jensen chronicled the tumultuousness of growing up — and their sophomore album Lost & Found is about trying to feel like an adult. It centers 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 on the acoustic rock song “Conditions,” - this lyric could be the album’s thesis.
Jensen and their band — bassist Bailey Minzenberger, drummer Jack Henry, and Andy Krull on pedal steel — recorded Lost & Found in Silsbee, Texas with producer Tommy Read; Read’s sister Hannah Read (a.k.a. Lomelda); and Eric Adams of Acre Memos. Major inspirations included Elliott Smith’s Either/Or and Townes Van Zandt, whose lyrics showed Jensen “that you could be earnest and still be taken seriously.” As they open up across Lost & Found, they emerge more fully formed than ever before.
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PRESS HIGHLIGHTS
Every melodic turn is unexpected yet faithful, every rhyme clever without sacrificing sincerity, no crack in Jensen’s voice gratuitous, no harmony unproductive.
— PITCHFORK
Jensen’s rootsy guitar strumming and soothing singing give Practice an irresistible gravitational pull and a disarming, personable charm—you’ll be won over before you’ve even listened all the way to the end.
— CHICAGO READER
"As Free Range, Chicago-based singer-songwriter Sofia Jensen writes songs that linger in the air and rattle in your brain long after they’ve dissipated. Lost & Found, their follow-up to 2023’s Practice, contains breathtaking beauty made out of very few production tricks — a testament to Jensen’s disarming delivery, as they yearn for connection and let their voice crack over straightforward yet effective arrangements.”
— BILLBOARD
"Free Range is a band we need now more than ever. If music is a salve, then I am grateful for the way Sofia Jensen, Bailey Minzenberger, Jack Henry and Red PK can soothe even the heaviest of hurt. “Storm” is the kind of song I wish I’d had when I was in my early twenties; “Storm” is the kind of song I’m privileged to know in my mid-twenties. “I stayed with my past as long as it took me to let go,” Jensen sings, in-between the cursive of a pedal steel and grins of acoustic guitar. “There’s no sense in trying to protect me from my ghosts.” “Storm” is forthright and deeply human, aglow with a clarity both well-worn and hard-earned. I think of the confusion and loneliness that colored Free Range’s first album, Practice, and how you can hear Jensen’s posture get straighter during the cowboy cries of “Storm.” This song is a miracle of honesty, if only because it does not turn its back towards the uneasiness of memory. You can hear what love binds every instrument, every breath."
— Paste (BEST NEW SONGS)
"They’re thrilling because potential is thrilling. Growth and development are thrilling. New, unexplored paths are thrilling. Does Free Range need to change direction? They do not; Lost & Found is further proof that they are very good at what they do.”
— PASTE (BEST NEW ALBUMS)
“Practice is brimming with some of the most pensive folk music of this generation.”
— Paste
"Lost & Found is such a musical and emotional achievement for front-person Sofia Jensen and their compadres in Free Range that people are finally going to start taking notice of perhaps the best kept secret in all of Chicago indie music, mark my words.”