Fatigue (album)

Fatigue is the second record by avant-pop Brooklyn-based musician Taja Cheek, under the moniker of L'Rain. It is her first recording with record label Mexican Summer, as her 2017 self-titled album was released through Astro Nautico.

Fatigue pushes forward in Cheek's avant-garde musicality, pulling in sounds from sundry stylings into a genre-subverting work. Instrumentally, it has help from twenty collaborators, who lend the record clavinet, saxophone, and more.

Upon its release, Fatigue was greeted with mostly positive reviews.

Background[]

Taja Cheek (L'Rain) planned on naming her second record Suck Teeth because she "loved how it encapsulated a very Black sound of disapproval, annoyance, and disappointment."^[1]

Composition[]

Fatigue has some musical footing in experimental pop and orchestral pop.^[2][3] However, the record contains diverse songs that bend genre. Ambient music, gospel, jazz, post-punk, neo soul, R&B, shoegazing, soft rock and sound collage have all been melded into L'Rain's own aesthetic.^[4][5][6]

Fatigue makes significant use of field recordings.^[2][6] The latter half of "Find It" samples a pastor singing at a funeral Cheek attended.^[7] "Black Clap" has sounds from a hand game she created alongside co-producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Chapoteau-Katz. About it, she said that "in the studio, I was thinking about ways that play can improve your life, and I was like, 'I'll just make up a hand game, because that's something I used to do when I was a kid.'"^[7]

It is also shaded in psychedelia,^[3][4][8] with its songs noted as neo-psychedelia.^[4] Psychedelic musicians like Syd Barrett and quartet Animal Collective have been noted as spiritual touchstones for L'Rain's music.^[3] L'Rain has cited the latter's early recordings as informative to her.^[7]

The second song, "Find It", digs into "sweet, distorted shoegaze pop".^[3] Experimentation continues even when songs dip into conventional pop and dance sounds, like on "Kill Self" and "Two Face".^[2] The latter song's R&B yields a "heady cacophony".^[9]

Critical reception[]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.2/10[10]
Metacritic	86/100[11]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[12]
Beats Per Minute	65%[13]
The Line of Best Fit	8/10[4]
Pitchfork	8.5/10[2]
Spectrum Culture	72%[14]

Fatigue was welcomed with critical applause upon its release. On Metacritic, the record holds a score of 86 out of 100, based on seven reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[11]

Eric Torres for Pitchfork applauded the record, calling it "graceful" and "never unapproachable". It was given the website's "Best New Music" accolade.^[2]

Accolades[]

Semester-end lists[]

Track listing[]

All tracks are written by Taja Creek.

Personnel[]

Adapted from the record's Bandcamp page.^[17]

References[]