The Best Album of 2021: “Fatigue” by L’Rain
L’Rain (a.k.a. Taja Cheek) is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, and art curator from Brooklyn, New York. Her debut album L’Rain, released in 2017 on New York-based label Astro Nautico, earned her recognition as a composer and experimentalist. Taja says that her projects are not solo efforts, but rather “more nuanced and collective.” Her band currently includes Ben Chapoteau-Katz, Justin Felton, and Alwyn Robinson.
By Bob Juburi
It’s difficult to describe L’Rain’s Fatigue to people. It makes no effort to cover the seams that keep it together. It glitches and glides through scenes, voicenotes, noise, and almost-songs, such that arriving at moments of consistent melodic content is like sigh of relief; an anchor to the familiar.
Music is and always will be a cunning game of tension and release, and the most adept artists, those that embrace the abstract and attempt to make something new, use “normality” as a release tool. Much like a jazz pianist will abstain from playing the “one” chord (the homey, familiar chord that sets the song’s key. In pop this is often the first chord), Taja refrains from the familiar until she feels that the sonic journey has reached its logical conclusion, and the magnetic pull of normality is at its climax. The tension is the meat and potatoes of this album, and the release a condiment that helps the consumer tie it all together, digest it, compare it.
This is, to me, the best album of 2021 because it bears all the hallmarks of what I love about hearing groundbreaking music for the first time: a refreshing format, unpredictability, a consistent theme and a difficulty placing it in the a musical paradigm. I believe that L’Rain has made something original, and that is the highest compliment that one can pay a musician.
Despite the chaos, this album is so graceful. Over-saturated but not harsh, intellectual but not arrogant. There’s an airhorn midway through the opening track “Fly, Die” that made me laugh out loud. It’s cheeky.
L’Rain (Taja Cheek)
Taja’s voice is soulful and delicate. Her melodies expertly tasteful, particularly on “Blame Me,” which to me seems like the album’s most intimate track, and the most “song-like.” A Lianne La Havas-style wander into guitar-based RnB singer-songwriter-ness.
“Suck Teeth” is a dark tapestry of over-compressed psychedelia that warps in and out of a 6/4 anthemic chorus. “Kill Self” is a demonic mess that belongs on a Brainfeeder record, inexplicably culminating in a four-to-the-floor EDM outro.
Texturally, Fatigue is a masterpiece. Vinyl warp, heavy distortion and over-compression, laced with masterfully designed synthscapes, chorused guitars and saxophone. It feels as though Taja is hugging herself in a sonic embrace.
Emotionally it is dripping in mourning, hope and self-reassurance. It doesn’t feel like Fatigue was meant for me and you. Its intimacy is so rare for something so sonically rich and diverse and I feel blessed that Taja chose to share it.
Bob Juburi is a jazztronica music producer, guitarist, sound designer, and writer based in Madrid. He was recently featured in Music Business Worldwide as one of the Hottest Independent Artists of 2020.