With eight tracks under its belt, L’Rain’s latest record erupts with sudden intensity. Like much of Taja Cheek’s output to date, fata morgana unfolds as a careful sequence of layered textures, moods, and atmospheres. It invites you to dive in, only to discover remarkable songs emerging from the hazy ether. Yet on “soulless cycle,” the fleeting sonic palette grows sharply tangible.
From the moment those guitar stabs begin to sweep from speaker to speaker, you sense the track is steering toward something singular. Over a bassy rumble that feels like creeping anxiety, Cheek threads a melody that reads like an incantation. “I am so tired of feeling so tired,” she intones. “I am so sorry for feeling sorry.” She settles into a looping chant, “I’m a psycho cycle,” until you’re spellbound—a recurring moment on fata morgana when her lyrics and music fuse in exquisite harmony. Then the hammer drops: a colossal drumroll, a torrent of warped guitar, a swell of otherworldly keyboards — a No Age-like eruption breaking through the fog, unloading and intensifying for two ecstatic minutes before dissipating. It’s a storm that sweeps away the damage rather than leaving wreckage in its wake.
Taken together, these truths hold at once: (1) “soulless cycle” ranks among the most potent recordings in recent memory. (2) The rest of fata morgana doesn’t comparable on a visceral level. (3) If you anticipate more tracks akin to “soulless cycle,” preparation may be in order. (4) The album would still be triumphant without its explosive centerpiece. I don’t want my excitement about one track to diminish the admiration I have for the rest of the record. The entire album leaves me awestruck, reaching for superlatives. Yet I also don’t want to downplay the visceral, almost ridiculous exhilaration I felt the first time I heard “soulless cycle,” and every subsequent listen. Even months later, it still reads like a string of exclamation points.
Much of fata morgana operates as an ellipsis. The album derives its title from a horizon-born mirage that warps shapes until they become unrecognizable. It is a fitting descriptor for this music, which drives the swooning repetition and formless drift of previous L’Rain records to more extreme conclusions. While 2023’s I Killed Your Dog found Cheek leaning into pop-leaning gestures within her experimental framework, fata morgana stands as perhaps her most avant-garde statement to date. She has framed it as the culmination of a four-album arc that began with 2017’s self-titled debut and 2021’s Fatigue, not the end of L’Rain, but a finishing of a chapter: “I really think of these four records as being companions to one another, and hopefully whatever I do next will feel like something else perhaps.”
This collection is animated by a central inquiry: “How do you grow in a world not meant for you to thrive in?” It’s a pressing issue for a Black woman in America, yet it will resonate with countless others who are navigating a society increasingly designed to squeeze the many for the benefit of the few. “More times than not I mean not what I say,” Cheek confesses on “glass ceiling.” “Smile hiding when I feel afraid, close my eyes, try to be brave/ Why does it hurt so bad to live out my days?” In channeling her dismay over daily struggles, she drew inspiration from bioluminescent deep-sea creatures and the Rose of Jericho, a desert plant that can endure long stretches without water. The imagery snaps into place when you hear what she crafted in Brooklyn with longtime collaborators Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Andrew Lappin.
Cheek is a brilliant singer-songwriter, yet her most striking gift may be sound design. She has a knack for capturing vibrations from surprising angles, pulling you inside the music even when it travels in the most oblique directions. Lappin’s mixing amplifies the effect: throughout fata morgana, noises drift in and out of the frame, linger in the corner until they suddenly seize the spotlight, or persist through the clamor only to reveal themselves in a quiet, lucid moment when the noise dies away. Beginning with the static-charged intro “rumors of light,” the album offers headphone-friendly pleasure. Track after track, team L’Rain constructs soundscapes that feel both minimal and lush at once. Arpeggiated guitars and keyboards abound. A silvery mist of atmosphere drifts above everything. They frequently bypass drums, à la Blonde, so that when a programmed beat and/or Timothy Angulo’s kit finally arrive, it carries greater weight.
Cheek’s friend Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto sequenced fata morgana, doing so with patience and intention, placing some of the most abstract cuts up front. The first proper song, “with time,” unfurls like a Smile-era or solo Thom Yorke piece; its piano and keyboard lines spiral through the shadows as Cheek sings a haunted lullaby, punctuated by processed vocals and a jagged, kinetic fusion break that feels like a tape rewinding in a cartoon. Her refrain: “I’m a vampire suck the pain.” Then comes “blue,” a voyage into spacious free jazz that operates like an orchestra forever warming up, brightened by the line that “shadows can only be made from the light.” Then, on “july 5th,” a beautifully bubbling folk/post-rock hybrid takes a surprising left turn into dancehall with aid from Kingston-born veteran Screechy Dan.
As the tracklist unfolds, tunes like “borderline” and “elmyra” feel less like eerie deconstructions and more like evolving explorations. Yet they continue to harness the power of a slow build, layering elements gradually and giving rhythm and texture equal footing with the main melody. In the denouement after “soulless cycle,” fata morgana offers additional quiet reflections, such as the delicate “glass ceiling,” as well as further genre-shifting surprises. The interlude “i remember” finds Cheek on the brink, recalling the euphoria of ’90s R&B. That leads directly into “birthday,” a lush, unabashedly romantic example of the form, buoyed by bass synth, wah guitar, and a dreamy sonic panorama. On an album of this scope, in a career of this scope, perhaps the most startling moment is when L’Rain veers straight down the middle.
By the time the closing track “church of no one” settles in, the spiritual overtakes the tangible, aligning with Cheek’s own closing words: “I feel realer these days/ With no body/ Don’t know no body/ I want mirror decay.” If I’ve understood her correctly, it’s a bleak endpoint for this journey, a concession that relief from oppression comes only by retreating from flesh, blood, and clarity into a refracted inner sanctuary of her own design, where the ugliness of this world cannot intrude. If that escape is the L’Rain sonic universe, Cheek’s conclusions begin to make sense; few artists have so effectively harnessed the power of fluid, shapeshifting intensity and a chaotic blur of musical norms. Still, I’m grateful for the instances when the mangled, vulnerable beauty of L’Rain’s private world roars back into the physical realm.
fata morgana is released 8/14 on Mexican Summer.
Other albums of note released this week:
- Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend
- Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal’s Doomed!
- Sweeping Promises’ You Say I Romanticize
- Carly Simon’s Comes In Waves
- Hovvdy’s Big World
- Getdown Services’ Massive Champion
- Melaina Kol’s Okay that’s a great idea because if I do that then
- Maggie Rose’s Half Moon
- Jungle’s Sunshine
- Kiwi Jr.’s Blowin’ Up
- James Ellis Ford’s Lost In Another World
- Benny Blanco’s Hermosa
- The Afghan Whigs’ Soft Control
- Nipsey Hussle & Bino Rideaux’s PROLIFIC
- Dent May’s The Big One
- Johanna Samuels’ Sorry, Kid
- Ayra Starr’s Starrgirl
- Laura Veirs’ Temple Songs
- HIGHSIGH’s Once Bend
- Duffy x Uhlmann’s Hot Creek
- Icona Pop’s Ritual
- Hayley Law’s Last Summer
- Sunna Corona’s Demigold
- Whitmer Thomas’ Terminal Crew Of Dudes
- Peace Test’s Repercussion
- Credit Card’s Devil’s Night / Dead Internet
- Alex Dupree’s Talking To The Dog
- Lukas Graham’s Good Times
- Pat McAfee’s The Diary Of A Polarizing Figure
- Ada Leas’ the end is a wave EP
- Martha Reeves’ Searching
- Jesse Draxler’s Traap Number 9
- Attic Abasement’s Moonlight Passes On
- Radiator Hospital’s Distorting Time
- Sparks’ Live On The Moon
- Fridayy’s Tension
- Michael Christmas, Chris Crack, & Girl Talk’s Don’t Come To My House Sharing Your Location
- Elizabeth Cook’s Great Television
- Judah & The Lion’s I Am A Prison
- Evil Island’s Terraform The Afterlife
- Masicka’s Foreign Reign
- Ally Evenson’s Speed Kills (All Gas)
- Smash Mouth’s Mercury Comet
- Bill Charlap, Jim Beard, Jim Pugh, & Ted Nash’s New American Symphonies
- Dana & Alden’s Papa’s Boat
- Strange Lot’s Strange Lot
- Jon Batiste’s Black Mozart (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 2), Monk Meditations (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 3), & Monk Movements (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 4)
- The Womack Sisters’ The Womack Sisters
- Grace Cummings’ Bloodhorse!
- Bajune Tobeta’s Anechoic
- Jenna Raine’s Jeans, Boys & Jesus
- Living Weapon’s Death In The Family
- Chico’s Chico
- Kelly Doyle’s Thieves
- Adam Rubenstein’s Firebreak
- Nina Winder-Lind’s Wild Love
- The Musalini & 9th Wonder’s The Don & Eye 3
- Cold Light’s Coldtron2
- Dead Tired’s Hornets Of Fall
- Liim’s A Sunflower Garden In Harlem Is Hard To Find
- Real Numbers’ Was It Always This Way
- Brendan Angelides’ Can You Feel The End Begin?
- Maryam Turkey’s Hiragt El Rouh
- rommulas’ SONOFRHEASILVIA
- BUNNY X’s Love On A High Floor
- October London’s Love Me For Me
- White Gourd’s (To Walk In) Justice (Calls For) Strength
- Various Artists’ Sending Hearts To All My Dearies – A Tribute To The Smashing Pumpkins
- Rockabye Baby!’s Lullaby Renditions Of Paramore
- Leo Sayer’s Leothology: The Studio Albums 1973-Now box set
- Bob Marley & The Wailers Concert Album’s Roots, Rock, Reggae: Live At The Hammersmith Odeon
- Various Artists’ Spring Awakening Original Cast Recording
- Stephen Bishop’s Careless (50th Anniversary Deluxe)
- Josh Turner’s Your Man (20th Anniversary Edition)
- Boston Manor’s The Be Nothing (10 Year Anniversary Edition)
- Mos Def’s The Ecstatic (Deluxe)
- KATSEYE’s Wild EP
- Djrum’s I Wander EP
- 16 Underground’s Without A Trace EP
- Regular Watts’ kWh EP
- ZAINAB’s Canal View EP
- Alani’s Somewhere Between Saying It EP
- Just Jayne’s Jayne EP
- Hank Heaven’s Welterweight EP
- Genia’s Intense Lover EP
- Cutthroat’s The Purge EP
- Derek Thomas’ Derek Thomas Live At The Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center EP
- TEHYA’s A CHANGEABLE FEAST EP
- KIMIKO’s Modern Dance EP
- Sabyna’s Unlovable EP
