Our weekly podcast includes in-depth analysis of the music we find extraordinary, exciting, and just plain terrible. This week Editor-in-Chief Puja Patel and Reviews Director Jeremy D. Larson host Features Editor Ryan Dombal to break down two new Best New Music LPs: pop futurist yeule’s surprising turn toward alt and indie rock, softscars, and L’Rain’s latest offering of dreamy, genre-flouting brilliance, I Killed Your Dog. Stay tuned for a special appearance from Olivia Rodrigo, who talks about one of her most beloved albums ever in our new segment, My Perfect 10.
Listen to this week’s episode and read an excerpt from it below. Follow The Pitchfork Review here.
Puja Patel: Let’s talk about L’Rain’s very funnily named I Killed Your Dog.
Jeremy D. Larson: I really have a hard time saying the title. I wouldn’t go that far. It’s confrontational.
Patel: Yeah, but L’Rain is confrontational.
Larson: That’s very true.
Patel: One of our writers, Clover Hope, interviewed Taja Cheek, the frontperson of L’Rain, and I loved that when she asked Taja about this title, Taja talked about how it makes you immediately think about the storyline. Like, is it a revenge plot? Is it that this person is a psycho? Is it metaphorical?
Larson: Is it an apology?
Patel: Yeah. It immediately gets you started down the path of opening up a little bit and trying to understand what might happen next.
Larson: I just like animals, I guess.
Patel: I mean, I think Taja also loves dogs, for what it’s worth!
Larson: Beyond the title, there’s so much information on this record. It’s taken a lot of listens to really get my bearings. It feels to me like a documentary in the streets of New York. It’s loud, it’s crowded, and that is such a cool feeling to get from a record.
Ryan Dombal: The way I think of Taja’s music is that it’s like someone toggling between stations on their personal radio dial—but in a dream. It’s totally by its own logic. Genre means little: There’s R&B and jazz and rock and soul and psych mashed together. Everything is on the table at any moment, and you don’t know what the next minute is gonna sound like. Her music is endless in that way.
