Album review: Tate McRae emerges as a solid pop force with Think Later
Tate McRae has just released Think Later. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
- Tate McRae
- Think Later
- ★★★★☆
Whether it’s Time Magazine crowning Taylor Swift Person of the Year, or Mitski selling out 3Arena, we are living through a golden era of female-fronted pop. So it’s the perfect moment for Calgary singer Tate McRae to release the punchy and effervescent Think Later.
It’s quite a progression from her 2022 debut, I Used To Think I Could Fly. There McRae, working with over a dozen producers and writers (including Billie Eilish’s brother Finneas O’Connell), seemed in a bit of a muddle. Having recently turned 20, she is more in control of her artistic vision on her second record, on which she has collaborated with Miley Cyrus/Beyoncé hit-whisperer Ryan Tedder.
Tedder is the personification of middle-of-the-road pop. McRae might have done better with a more left-of-field collaborator. Think Later is a solid album. Yet it’s easy to imagine edgier production bringing out the darkness roiling under tracks such as 'Cut My Hair' and 'Greedy'.
But there’s still enough unflinching melodrama pulsating through the veins of the project for it to rate as a success. McRae seems to have been through the mill in her personal life. These new songs are frank about what she has learned and lost.
She describes the project as a reflection on “the all-too-relatable feelings of falling in love and embracing the raw emotions that you experience as a result of leading with your intuition and heart”. That framing is borne out by the unfurling juggernaut that is single 'Greedy' (“don’t get greedy/ that shit won't end well”).
Here and elsewhere, McRae’s expressive voice – a tsunami of fizz and angst – is the muscle propelling the material. Pushing through the often anonymous production, she invariably lands on a pummelling chorus on the quietly volcanic 'Hurt My Feelings' and gothic ballad 'Grave'. Think Later could do with having some of the gloss stripped away. Otherwise, this is a knockout second swing by an up-and-comer to watch.
