Whatever the lovely Essie Jain is doing, you cannot help but to pull yourself closer and to listen as intensely as your body can possibly listen. Her songs resonate with ache and you are thusly brought to the water's calm edge, like a thirsty fawn. Her music comes from as deeply within as it can and it qualifies as kissing. It qualifies as skinny-dipping. It qualifies as shivering and hovering. We Made This Ourselves is a masterpiece, pure and simple. Here, Jain reads from Hermann Hesse's "Gertrude" and the close listen picks out the children playing on the playground outside her open apartment window. It's so her. -- Sean Moeller