Just weeks before her first headlining Toronto show at Axis Club, Jensen McRae announced that she'd be returning to the city this fall and playing at the Danforth, a venue more than twice its size. That's the kind of momentum the Los Angeles folk pop singer-songwriter had behind her when she took the stage to a sold-out room on Tuesday night.
It's not until they all commune in a setlist together that you realize just how many biblical references McRae makes, or how many times the word "God" appears in her lyrics. These are simply the stakes at hand in her music; not only life and death, but something beyond it.
McRae voices the quintessential girlhood experience of being so deeply affected that better judgment is cast aside to turn unremarkable boys in fake bands — losers, even! — into shambolic deities. With the wisdom of hindsight, you discover that something about them choosing you for however long they did affirmed the part of you that, throughout all of the struggles of self-worth we face in our teens and 20s, still somehow believes you're special.
It's all a reflection, we find out later. McRae knows this, but she's not rushing the voracious fans who hang on her every word to get back on the other side of the looking glass; instead, donning her signature transparent specs, she's sharing her own stories of survival to show them that they can make their own way through it.
For McRae's arrival, the Axis Club was affixed with signs that read "MASK UP!" and employees handing out black N95s to attendees. While not everyone obliged and I didn't get the highly sought-after moment of being in an even mostly-masked crowd, the effort on the part of the artist, a fellow chronic illness-haver, was not lost on me. Regardless of health conditions, it can be financially devastating for smaller acts touring in the ongoing pandemic to have to cancel shows over COVID cases, so asking your audience to mask up seems like a no-brainer.
Following opener Lauren Juzang leading the crowd through a singalong of Owl City's "Fireflies" on her neon orange Stratocaster and replicated radio transmissions — a nod to the Back to the Future reference in the title of McRae's new album, I Don't Know How, but They Found Me! — the headliner arrived on stage. Joined by her brother Holden on keys, guitarist Kevin Burke, drummer Griffi and bassist Willie Easley, McRae immediately pushed her voice to its limits on open-chorded opener "The Rearranger," the sheer power of her robust, resonant belt almost too much for the venue's sound system to handle.
Sound issues would be the least of the problems McRae and co. would face making their way through the set, though: they had to stop the show not once, but twice, because someone in the audience required medical assistance on this humid mid-May evening — the first of which ironically happened as the artist was hyping up "any former theatre kids" while introducing her song "Dead Girl Walking." After the second incident, venue staff started passing out water bottles.
Both McRae and the Toronto audience ("the best crowds, low-key," she noted of the city) seemed undeterred, though — or perhaps just all the more eager to make the most of their finite time together. At one point late in the set, the singer-songwriter made reference to the success she's had on TikTok, a platform that we've grown accustomed to associating with fleeting viral moments that, in most cases, really don't tend to sustain themselves.
McRae is one of the rare cases where those moments manage to beget more such moments, accumulating in what is clearly a devoted following. "Immune" — the 2021 single that provided her first one, parodying Phoebe Bridgers writing a song about getting vaccinated (and hooking up) at Dodgers Stadium — was conspicuously absent from the setlist.
Instead, selections included a cover Taylor Swift's "Guilty as Sin?" (the best song from The Tortured Poets Department, and a fittingly holy McRae pick) and "Breakeven" by the Script. (Have we reached the point where enough time is passed for the latter to be cool again? It feels too soon, but maybe I just don't want to process how long ago 2008 was.)
The trio of singles from the new record earned some of the most Swiftie-worthy passionate singalongs: "Keep whistling, boy / I was never your dog" from "Praying for Your Downfall"; "You swore you'd raise our kids to end up just like you / Well, you're a false prophet / And that's a goddamn promise" from "Savannah"; and pretty much all of "Massachusetts," another of McRae's viral hits, reserved for the final encore.
During a solo portion of the set, the singer-songwriter also gave an unreleased song called "Good Theatre" its live debut. "It's set in the '60s, but it's also perennial in the sense that it's about a man who is bad," McRae quipped. While her lyrical barbs generally pull no punches, she also writes with admirable generosity: a juxtaposition like "He cleaned my clock / He bought me daffodils" ("Daffodils") is an exemplary twisting of cliché into haunting poetic imagery, holding two incompatible truths about one thing in a way that sticks.
"White boy, what will you make of me?" McRae sings on "White Boy" (initially released in 2019 as her debut single and later included on the 2022 album Are You Happy Now?), which — despite initially feeling uncomfortable about how personal it was — she admits has become a song that's very important to her. What the titular anonymous character makes of her almost doesn't matter at this point. What she makes of him, however, will be everything.