Since 2019, Erika de Casier has been gradually expanding her world of atmospheric, Y2K-inspired R&B, welcoming guest features for the first time on her 2024 album Still, co-writing for rising K-pop group NewJeans, and teaming up with producer Nick León on the club hit “Bikini.” With Lifetime, she retreats fully into her own orbit. Her fourth album is the first she’s written and produced entirely on her own. That solitude yielded musings that feel both introspective and existential—the kind of thoughts that keep you up at 3 am. Fleetingness is built into Lifetime’s structure. Over 30 minutes, it drifts between ’90s trip-hop, velvety R&B, and New-Age ambience, its tracks blurred by long intros and outros. De Casier’s crystalline vocals peek through the haze as she confronts impermanence in life and love. “This is just a body/And time will take its toll on me,” she says matter-of-factly on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Romance beckons on “You Got It!” and peaks on the sprawling “Moan” before disappearing entirely on “The Chase,” filled with dial- and ring-back tones of calls left unanswered. “Seasons,” wrapped in icy synth stabs, is a reminder that the world moves on, with or without us. Despite the heaviness, de Casier finally finds beauty in what can’t last forever: “The day I was born, it was all clear,” she sings on the closing title track. “I’m so alive/A whole lifetime till the day I die.”