Free Range - Lost & Found (2025)

“Tell me stories about / All that you wanted to be / And then I’ll tell you / I love what’s happened to me,” Free Range vocalist Sofia Jensen sings on their sophomore album, Lost & Found, which came out this Friday. Everything is not tied up in neat little bows on the album, however, an album that they said deals with the tenuous transition to adulthood. Whether it’s nightmare’s of losing a friend on a sinking boat or their struggle to become “Clean” or the persistent ghosts of memory, there are plenty of personal battles and obstacles to becoming who they want to be and to putting out a successful second album, that is hushed and raucous at the same time, confessional and shrouded in poetic mystery.

“It’s not like I choose my fears / There’s nothing worse than running from a mirror,” they sing on the song “Faith,” one of the songs that showcases their vocal versatility. There are songs that sound like one of their heroes, Elliott Smith, like the song “Chase,” with its melancholic melody and plodding drums. There’s some Pinegrove feel to some of the melodies, as well, the melodies being one of the sweet highlights of the album. That’s not to say that the band is not pulling their own weight. Each track is varied enough, with lap steel here and electric guitar there, picked and strummed guitar, and a million beautiful touches, like the strings in the album opener, “Tilt,” which is reprised instrumentally in the last track.

It’s an album that reveals itself with more listens, both in the story and the sound, with Jensen’s own personal mythology of flashing green lights and bombs going off. There is a lot of relational story telling on the album, as well, whether it is romantic interests or friends, it is hard to tell sometimes. The title of the record, Lost & Found, captures the tension of becoming, a literal memory, (“Every day you’d come around / Walk me down to the lost and found,”) but one of the clearer metaphors on the album.

It is how the album doesn’t make it easy to understand that is one of the selling points of the album, however. And the melodic and compositional beauty of each and every song. It makes sense that Free Range will be touring with the soft-edged but fully-formed Hovvdy in May, because they have a similar songwriting sensibility. I really enjoyed listening to this album.