L'Rain's Avant-Garde touches manages to expand even more with her sophomore record, Fatigue.
So alright, L’rain. She’s an Avant-Garde artist who toys with album construction and sound to make it feel a bit hard to get into. Her self-titled debut was a personal and chaotic project as it touches on the grief and death of her mother during the creation of that album. Where the sounds expand and metamorphosize in strange ways, lyrics that are buried under the dense instrumentation, and reversed vocal fragments that are placed on the start and end of every track. It’s quite difficult to get engaged with the unconventionality of it all but again, it was definitely a striking debut record. And I was thinking that her sophomore album this year will be as unconventional as her debut is or maybe even more.
How will I describe it? If you’re not in line with the fractured moods and tones that you see in artists like Solange with her 2019 release, and especially Slauson Malone which I’m not surprised did some additional production here, you will find yourself distancing away from the pieces of lyrical detail and nuggets of sounds that you will get.
As for me though? I’ll admit that I was a bit cooler on those records given the fractured, mood over consistency sort of presentation that they have on their records. But with this album, I’m more able to get into it as much as I could even with the fragmented presentation. The vocals are much more clearer amidst the hazy and still blurry soundscapes, there are still nuggets of weirdness in the sound that I certainly appreciate, and the song - interlude - song structure is handled pretty well here given the songs are much shorter but leave a strong payoff. I liked the downbeat melody and the slow-burning strings on ‘Blame Me’, the drum patterns on ‘Suck Teeth’, the free-flowing tones on ‘Two Face’, the triumphant expansion and the wonderful autotune touches on ‘I V’, the piano playing with the down tuning on ‘Need Be’, and the ascending closure that is ‘Take Two’.
The themes of the content are treated in a fascinating way. It still does touch upon healing within the presence of grief, but L’Rain explores them in an explorative fashion that not only means to everyone, but also to her. Her exploration of this theme paired with the blurry aesthetic of sounds confuses the allured who might want to understand the tangled emotions that reside in these songs, interludes of recordings that are important to a specific moment in L’rain’s life, and even the 2-word song title themselves.
And yes, these parts coming together results in a confused, fatiguing holistic experience. But with the fully realized songs having so much interesting stuff going on in the production and composition that does stick for me under the 30-minute runtime even if this whirling presentation does make it hard for me to get into it at spots, I’m still in awe with L’rain’s craft and avant-garde touches in this record. Again, not an easy record to get into, but if you’re able to swash through the fractured and dense display of sounds and emotions, what you’ll find is something transcendent.
Favorite Tracks: Two Face, Blame Me, Suck Teeth, Need Be, Take Two, I V
Least Favorite Track: Kill Self