When she was a kid Raechel Whitchurch spent significant time with her grandfather who was a church minister. One of his humanitarian offerings was playing music to inmates at the jail in Broken Hill. Raechel would often go along with him. She didn’t question going into an adult jail singing with a church minister. That’s what you did, right? Recently Raechel was passing through Broken Hill during a tour with Ian Moss. There was a day off and she and her husband decided to go and sing for inmates in that same Broken Hill jail. “It was really emotional,” Raechel recalls. “It was a day that evoked pain, suffering – and pure joy. I understand that pain can also manifest itself in joy. “That was a day and a life experience that was meant to happen.”

In many ways Raechel’s second album is encapsulated in that day in Broken Hill. This is an album about joy and suffering, experiencing the highest of highs and the lowest of lows – often simultaneously. It’s about being human and the realisation that it’s OK to be sad – and that deep joy can be found in acceptance, sadness, pain and suffering. That’s life and it’s a wild wild ride. But what a time to be alive.

The songs on this new album form a bookend to Raechel’s debut Finally Clear. “My first album was all hope and wonder and optimism. Family and faith and finding myself. This album is very much part 2 of that – what happens after you find the courage to five something a shot, and what happens after that.”