Daily Dose is your daily source for the song you absolutely, positively need to hear every day. Curated by the Paste Music Team. Today’s installment features “The Moon” by Free Range.
Earlier this year, Free Range—the project of Chicago singer/songwriter Sofia Jensen—released their debut album, Practice. It was a solemn, sublime and stirring LP with brilliant tracks like “Want To Know,” “Growing Away” and “All My Thoughts” that quickly established Jensen as one of the brightest up-and-coming lyricists working right now and a crucial fixture of Chicago’s DIY scene.
Yesterday, they announced a new EP, Loft Sessions, which finds them performing two stripped-down tracks from Practice along with three new tunes—”The Moon,” “Way Out” and “Nothing”—and a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Tecumseh Valley.” The record was recorded at Wilco’s storied studio and finds Jensen giving these songs a second life with even more nuance than before. It’s a real reward watching such emotionally dense compositions become even more touching months after hearing them for the first time.
Lead single “The Moon” is sparse yet captivating, as it’s just Jensen, their guitar and a streamlined pedal steel undercurrent. The work is intimate and spiritual, as they muse on trying to find closure with a lost loved one, on trying to, finally, move on from heartache for good. “I’m watching your past collide with mine,” Jensen sings. “Ride home on the 96th, avoid the trading glances down the aisle. But I can’t stop fading out of your view.”
“‘The Moon’ is a song about change. About things moving so fast that it feels disorienting,” Jensen says. “Oftentimes, I will cling to things that are familiar when I experience this, when it would be better to simply let those things go. Clinging to the past when life is moving forward around me is something that has only distanced me more from people and things that I care about. Writing this song was my way of acknowledging that and trying to let go of someone.”
Listen to “The Moon” below.