“I’m in a precarious Airbnb just outside Toronto; we are on our way to Montreal,” Taja Cheek tells me as our Zoom connection strengthens. A month from our chat, L’Rain, her moniker and musical project, will be embarking on the UK & Europe leg of her tour, I Killed Your Dog, including a performance at London’s iconic Barbican Centre. A musician from the womb, Taja grew up as a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, exploring her poetry and sonic layers while creating a heartfelt and deeply personal music essence, one that particularly shines through her most recent tracks.

I Killed Your Dog is her third studio album, marking a new chapter in her artistry as she closes the gap between her real-life and on-stage personas in what feels like a brattier and more disruptive take on her music. “I wanted to show a little bit of an edgier side to the project because it’s definitely there, and it can be unhinged and kind of wild,” she says. “And I wanted to position myself as an unreliable narrator. I feel like celebrity culture is really unhealthy in a lot of ways, so I wanted to resist anyone saying things like ‘Oh, I want to be like her,’ whatever. I’m just a person.”

Unlike the person I find on the other side of my Zoom screen — a confident but coy, sublime, and low-key artist — L’Rain’s sounds are theatrical, satirical, and eccentric. Through her musical project, which she describes as a “collaborative solo” endeavour, she explores the depths and intensity of feelings like grief and love. While mastering her craft as a multi-instrumentalist, she also plays with mundane sounds from the likes of birds and voice notes — a detail that sounds organic but, in I Killed Your Dog, also makes a subtle allusion to the complexity of the human experience. “I feel like that’s what life is about. You have surprises and things you didn’t expect come your way, and sometimes you’re sad, and sometimes you’re ecstatic, and sometimes you’re confused,” she says.

Here, we sat down with L’Rain to discuss her artistic upbringing, the power of her live performances, and how it feels to have her most personal project to date out in the world. Keep scrolling to read the full interview…

How did everything start for you?
I grew up playing piano, classical piano, and I feel like that really influences a lot of my music now. I would make a lot of mistakes when I was practising, and those mistakes would lead me to other songs, and then I would get more interested in the songs I was writing than whatever I was trying to practise. So a lot of my early musical experiences kind of came out of that, and, you know, I played cello in school, and eventually was teaching myself bass off of YouTube videos so I could play in bands because bands always needed a bassist.

And when did you feel like you had enough material to start working on your first album?
Oh, I feel like I’ve said so many different dates at this point, haha. Probably around 2014, 2015, but it really depends. A lot of those songs on that first record were, you know, they came from so many different parts of my life. I’m really like a hoarder of ideas. So if something doesn’t work, I don’t throw it away; I just kind of shelve it in my little archive, and then I come back to it sometimes even like 10 years later. So yeah, what is time, and then you can have like a completely different perspective on it.

Talk me through your new album, I Killed Your Dog. First of all, I’m so intrigued about the title — where did that come from?
The title serves a couple of purposes. One, I was just thinking through, you know, relationships and heartbreak and how sometimes it feels counterintuitive, but you can hurt the people closest to you easier than you can hurt a stranger. So I was thinking about that, and I wanted the title to approximate that feeling and that hurt. And I also wanted to show a little bit of an edgier side to the project because it’s definitely there and it can be unhinged, and it can be kind of wild. And I wanted to show that more in the record and to position myself as an unreliable narrator. I feel like celebrity culture is really unhealthy in a lot of ways, so I wanted to resist anyone saying things like ‘Oh, I want to be like her,’ whatever. I’m just a person.

Would you say that this edgier and unhinged side of your music also expresses a personal chapter and who you are today?
Yes, it can be very personal. I mean, L’Rain is really just a channel for me to explore parts of myself in a very public way. I can be very quiet, and I can also be really crazy and really loud. And the music has that kind of dynamic range too, I think. Because that’s all just inside of me.

When did you start working on this album, and how did this idea come about? Did you revisit some of your previous work for it as well?
It really started with an exploration of grief, and I feel like a lot of that is still there. And then, you know, you wipe some of it away, and then you make a new record, but all of the things that were there in the last few records are still kind of poking through the surface a little bit. So, all the themes from the self-titled and Fatigue are there too. But I think I started working on this record pretty much right after I finished writing Fatigue, and I think that’s where I started working on this record. We kind of keep it going at a quick pace, and I have this big archive of materials, so I’m always kind of ready to record.

And where do you think you most find common ground between Taja and L’Rain?
Well, I actually feel like for the most part, I kind of combine them together. L’Rain is kind of an alter ego in some ways. The name actually comes from a fake alter ego I used to have, but it really is just all about me. It’s a way for me to figure myself out through issues that I’ve had going through. And part of it is selfish, but the other part is that I feel like if I’m just being really honest about things that I’m really trying to figure out, that I’m not alone most likely, and that other people are probably also trying to sort through the same things. We’re all just people, I figured out. The lines are very blurry.

And how does it feel to finally put this project out?
It feels really good! When you have a record, it feels like a big secret that you can’t tell anyone, and it can make you feel crazy because you’re like ‘I have this whole thing I’ve been spending all this time working on, and I can’t talk about it,’ and then once it’s finally released, it’s a huge relief. I don’t have to worry about all the mistakes I made and all the things that I’ve done that I hate. Nothing matters because it doesn’t belong to me anymore; it belongs to other people. It’s quite freeing.

Did you collaborate with anyone specifically on this album, or is it a self-produced project?
L’Rain is complicated because it’s kind of a solo project, but like a collaborative solo project. There’s the record side of it, which I make with Ben Chapoteau-Katz, who’s my right hand in everything L’Rain, and our friend Andrew Lappin, who’s the only real engineer that I worked with as an adult. And the three of us make the records together; we all produce, I play as many of the instruments as I can. But there are things I just can’t do, like I can’t play the saxophone, so Ben does that. And Ben is also a really talented synthesiser, so he makes a lot of the synth sounds. But the live show is completely different; it’s a way to completely reimagine the records, and that’s deeply, deeply collaborative. Everybody brings a little bit of themselves to the project, so depending on who’s playing in the band, it will sound drastically different. Because people are doing what they feel like the songs need. And I think that’s what makes it really special because there’s a lot of trust in making music with people in that way.

One thing that I particularly love about the record is how you constantly get surprised with sounds and elements that add so much to the overall sonic experience. How did this idea come about?
I think that’s just kind of the way my brain works, and for me, those collage elements are really freeing to create because I have a lot of anxiety and I feel a lot of pressure, honestly, as a woman musician in particular. And I always feel like I have to show that I can do everything, and that I’m competent, and it’s a lot of pressure. Or at least I feel a lot of pressure. And sometimes I let it get to me, but when I’m making these collages, it’s a way more intuitive process that doesn’t have anything to do with ability. It has nothing to do with technique, harmony, and melody. It’s just pure intuition, and it’s just really fun. It doesn’t have to sound technically right or good; it’s just a way for me to express myself. A lot of the ones that are on the first record I don’t even really remember making; I just saved them in a folder, and suddenly I had tons of material. But these were more intentional. It’s fun; I feel like that’s what life is about. You have surprises and things you didn’t expect to come your way, and sometimes you’re sad, and sometimes you’re ecstatic, and sometimes you’re confused.

This record talks a lot about grief and love, as you said, you explore a deeper level of your artistry. What does this step mean to you today?
I feel like I use music as a way to make sense of my life honestly, and so anytime something bad happens in particular, I would like to think… I mean, it’s possible to make music from a place of joy, but that’s just not me right now. So when something bad happens I really sit on it and I end up just writing. And I was thinking a lot about the ends of relationships and relationships I’ve been in, and a lot of the songs I wrote throughout my life have come from a place of examining those moments. Either romantic relationships or friendships or family. So thinking about grief in a literal way but also just as a way of exploring endings. So it felt really honest to just talk about that because sometimes people listen to my music and they’re like ‘oh it’s so heady’. But really, for me, it just comes from a very visceral place. So I wanted to focus on relationships and love as a way of being.