L’Rain
I Killed Your Dog
MEXICAN SUMMER
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Taja Cheek is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist who likes to draw from multiple genres to create a unique sound that resists easy categorization. As L’Rain, she transposes different styles of music in a messy yet pleasing way to create thought-provoking, engaging, and otherworldly sounds—strange yet familiar, a liminal space that’s pleasant yet uncanny. She builds these unique worlds by incorporating vocal loops and reverb into the sounds of jazz and musique concrète while deconstructing traditional pop structures and mainstream genres like R&B and rock.
Compared to 2021’s Fatigue, Cheek’s third and latest LP I Killed Your Dog utilizes fewer elements of neo-soul and instead exhibits some of her most intricate and engaging rock-inspired compositions to date. She brilliantly uses vintage synthesizers and electric guitars to build phantasmagoric melodies that feel psychedelic and ethereal. Loops, chord modulations, sax melodies, and guitar solos come together to add an element of jazz fusion that sounds mystical and baroque rather than tacky.
I Killed Your Dog opens with “Sincerity Commercial,” a track consisting of multiple recordings stitched together with the most audible section whispering, “Wouldn’t it be great to have that state of mind?,” setting the mood for the ambivalent emotions and heady themes to come. Its title feels facetious, though, directly contrasting the album’s name and showcasing an element of rage and sardonicism that contradicts the seemingly mellow melodies found across the LP.
This tension, however, breaks on “Pet Rock,” a reverbed-out psychedelic joint that sounds sweeter than it actually is by way of Cheek’s scathing lyrics: “Cut the bullshit and make me into something else,” she sings, yearning for a former lover. The lyrics and instrumental clash with each other, as if to symbolize ambivalence, an emotional space one often finds oneself in after a breakup—frustrated and angry by loss, but at the same time yearning for the sweetness of that bygone relationship.
The climax of the record is its title track—by far the most complex recording on the album, with Cheek using modulation and dissonance to maximum effect. It’s disorienting yet pleasing; it’s vicious and cathartic. This effect stems from the song’s melody as it shuffles back and forth from a tritone note to its resolving chord, invoking a feeling of unease. And in the song’s final moments, strings powerfully crescendo into echoed-out dissonance, a fitting end for a song about murder.
What does the album mean? Is it a confession? Is it remorse? Or is it a statement of vindication? It’s hard to say, because—like most of Cheek’s music—it resists interpretation and makes us reckon with ambiguity. More often than not, the contradictions left behind by complexity are left unresolved to hide the sometimes-uncomfortable truth.
