New Music Reviews: Angela Autumn and L’Rain

Surprisingly, I plan to review quite a few rock albums over the rest of this year. But for now, normal service – the banjo-playing Angela Autumn and the “approaching songness” of L’Rain.

Angela Autumn

Believer

2026, 7.5/10
Angela Autumn was born in Appalachia, in western Pennsylvania, but she now lives in Nashville. For her second album, she returned to her Appalachian roots, spending time outdoors in the Tennessee woods, in a rural treehouse outside Asheville, and sleeping on a warehouse floor in Chattanooga. She explained that she puts herself in extreme situations to write – “Without the earth, I probably wouldn’t have any music.”

Autumn plays banjo, and she’s accompanied by producer Isaiah Beard, who plays multiple instruments. The tension between Autumn’s traditional banjo sound and the dynamic electric guitar gives her music a distinctive feel.

Yeah, it’s just very fun to write songs on banjo. I think what it unlocked for me is the form of old-time, which is AABB. That form is cool to use in songwriting, or the myth that we need a chorus and a chorus and a bridge. Whereas old time, it’s just verse, verse, verse, riff over and over and over and over and over. It’s such a cool paint tool to use.
Angela Autumn, The Creative Independent

Autumn’s reminiscent of Big Thief’s Adrienne Lenker, although her lyrical approach is more straightforward. She’s often acerbic, singing lines like “If I’m being honest, I can’t keep a promise/And to be honеst I don’t think about you at all”. It’s fun when she’s more rock-oriented, like on ‘Sage Brush’. Like a lot of contemporary indie music, ‘Garbage’ has some roots in 1990s alt-rock.

Angela Autumn’s collision of banjo and rock guitar works nicely, and I look forward to more.

L’Rain

Fata Morgana

2026, 8/10
Taja Cheek has a varied musical background – studying ballet, learning baroque recorder, and singing in an Iron Maiden tribute band. She’s back with her fourth album of “approaching songness”. Her music is built around samples from field recordings, yet her smooth voice and melodic sense balance out her sonic experimentation. Her music’s often pretty, even as it jumps wildly from section to section.

This album is about knowing I deserve more. [It’s] about being made to feel crazy. It’s about the deep sea, crushing ice, and roses of jericho. It’s about being a ‘singular artist’ with little to show for it.

L’Rain, Instagram

These songs are like little impressionist paintings. The shimmering breakdown that derails the moody piano of ‘With Time’ is one of my favourite moments. As always with L’Rain, it’s eclectic – Jamaican artist Screechy Dan takes ‘July 5th’ closer to reggae than you’d expect. Pieces like ‘Elmyra’, ‘Borderline’, and the closing ‘Church of No One’ are among the closest L’Rain has come to conventional songcraft.