Taja Cheek has never shied away from the darkest corners of her mind. As L’Rain, she has long heeded her mother’s challenge to “make a way out of no way” by harnessing the full force of her emotions. In feeling out her most guilt-ridden, bloodthirsty thoughts, the multi-instrumentalist conjures unwieldy shapes and arrives at a clear-eyed perspective on the other side of turmoil. “soulless cycle,” the lead single from the forthcoming fata morgana, unravels a mental thread that comes perilously close to spiraling out completely. There’s no way to rationally unpack the circular logic of thoughts like, “I am so tired of being so tired/I’m so sorry for feeling so sorry,” so the artist pummels into them instead. As Cheek calmly recites her lyrics like negative affirmations, bending the title’s “cycle” until it sounds more like “psycho,” the music rages and recedes. It’s the heaviest track she’s ever released, leaving her voice just audible amid a crush of pulverizing drums and redlining guitars: a wall of sound that’s constantly assembling and collapsing. But as the noise clears and the song trails off into a fugue of hazy synths, it hints that L’Rain is once again on the cusp of a revelation.
