Album of the Week | L’Rain: I Killed Your Dog

“Basic Bitch?” Taja Cheek—who writes and records music as L’Rain—could hardly be described as such, but she’s embracing that figure in her new music. Her two prior albums were striking amalgamations of original composition and found sound; intricate tapestries of emotion with sonic collages so variegated it gets the neurons firing with possibility. But for I Killed Your Dog, Cheek’s third full-length as L’Rain, she tackles love in all its forms with piercing candor, chucking aside any suggestion of pretense. The album veers across sonic territories—psych pop, folk, post-rock and more—and, as is endemic to the L’Rain experience altogether, marvels at grief’s omnipresence and Cheek’s relationship to femininity and emotionality in a world that forbids Black women from accessing them. There are plenty of found sound interludes, too, some of which even elicit a chuckle. I Killed Your Dog is a masterclass in threading the needle between experimentation and plainspokenness, manifesting enchanting collages of rhythm and sound that Cheek can conjure without sacrificing a drop of emotion. It is a privilege to witness and a pleasure to hear.

For L’Rain, love is not only universal, it is all-encompassing. Every relationship has, at its root, some variety of love that nourishes it. Whether that love is romantic, familial or platonic, it has the potential to end in heartbreak—something L’Rain touches regularly in her music and approaches on I Killed Your Dog with probity. The album’s first full-length track, “Our Funeral,” is a stark opener, with Cheek’s vibrating, manipulated vocals recounting the feeling of watching something beloved come to an end. “Pet Rock” is much rougher on the ears and exciting, with canons of screeching guitar and vocals recorded while Cheek writhed on the floor. The title track is minimalistic, letting her voice meander as she repeats: “I killed your dog.” For Cheek, dogs are the epitome of the beloved; even to utter the phrase “I killed your dog” is a challenge, but it’s also a swift way to grab someone’s attention and change life courses forever, for better or for worse.

L’Rain toys with a wide variety of sounds on I Killed Your Dog, exhibiting the versatility that Cheek and her collaborators have demonstrated on prior work. “5 to 8 Hours a Day (WWwaG)” is equal parts vintage folk and futuristic post-rock, exploring Cheek’s evolving relationship with the concept and reality of “practicing” as an artist. Pedal steel and electric guitars have a prominent role in the piece, at one level, to make it abundantly clear that L’Rain is not referencing jazz. Such a genre tag gets thrown onto her work a little too quickly without adequately accounting for the rock and folk references made alongside them. “Uncertainty Principle” is an especially potent listen, with growing vocals, percussion and electronics in conflict—mirroring the experience of being at a crossroads with a potential new mate. “Knead Bee” is the closest analogue to anything on Fatigue, as the song itself is a full version of “Need Be,” one of the album’s transitional interludes. As lustrous as the song is, it is direct: Cheek speaks to her younger self, prattling on about her woes, with a simple message of “You’re fine.” One of the album’s biggest stars is the most pop-like track, closer “New Year’s UnResolution”—a meditation on the mental checkpoints one reaches throughout and after the end of a relationship: “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in love / Swallow sun spit up snow / Days, they don’t get old.” Cheek’s voice feels like an overhead thought-bubble while synths churn into something psychedelic and danceable, coagulating into L’Rain’s catchiest work yet. It’s an all-around stunner.

Much like on Fatigue, the interludes on I Killed Your Dog are not to be missed. “Sincerity Commercial” opens the album with a looped recording of choreographer Bill T. Jones recalls a dream to an audience, setting up the album’s more-than-occasional dreamlike detours. “Oh Wow A Bird” is that simple—a five-second voice message where the sender, at the end, suddenly exclaims upon witnessing a bird. At over a minute, “I Hate My Best Friends” is the most unsettling, with a haunted lullaby singer confessing that she resents her friends for trying to “fix” her. “What’s That Song” is a generative exercise, where Cheek’s band takes a jazz snippet from a friend’s voice message and turns it into a real record. These brief snapshots contain moments of power and humor, all archived on I Killed Your Dog as part of L’Rain’s artmaking process.

I Killed Your Dog starts from a place of universal experience—that of love—and never departs it, and I Killed Your Dog is full of signature L’Rain compositional elements that make for a musical tour de force. L’Rain is unbound by genre but revels in it as commentary on where she, as a Black musician, can stake a claim and be taken seriously. She approaches love and all its complexities with gut-wrenching metaphors and sharp candor that never occlude her messages. I Killed Your Dog is a shocker for how its title suggests cruelty. But, in truth, the album has a disarming tenderness, especially in its minimalist moments. The album is nowhere near violent or standoffish, even when Cheek seeks to be somewhat bratty or intense. Love is a complex gravitational force that softens souls towards each other and, even in the face of heartbreak, L’Rain’s softness is part of what makes this album such a success. I Killed Your Dog dazzles with its musicality, but its emotion is what takes it to the next level.

Devon Chodzin is a critic and urban planner with bylines at Slumber Mag, Bandcamp Daily, Merry-Go-Round, Post-Trash and more. He is currently a student in Philadelphia. He lives on Twitter @bigugly.