Hi, everyone. Loosethony Cooltano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Kali Uchis record, Sincerely,.

Here we have the newest project from pop singer and songwriter, Ms. Kali Uchis, her fifth, in fact, and a very quick follow-up to last year's Orquídeas. Now, if you're at all new to Kali Uchis and her music, you should know going into this album: she has undergone a lot of changes personally and artistically since she first originally burst onto the scene like a decade ago, with her breakout success being very much bolstered by some strong tracks on her Por Vida EP, along with a big endorsement from Tyler, the Creator, too.

She had a very great solid debut album, Isolation, that dropped in 2018, which covered a lot of genre bases and pretty much proved her validity as an alternative pop it-girl. But with her following record, she would go on to attain more mainstream success and even embrace more Latin pop influences along on the way, too, which would further set her apart from a lot of her competition in the pop sphere.

Now, a lot of her growth since then has turned up in her writing, with her finding more ways to essentially be more personal in her songs, whether on tracks she is exploring her sexuality or falling in love. But this new LP here contains even more material about how her life has shifted as she's grown, further ingrained into a long-term relationship, and has also entered motherhood.

The opening "Heaven is a Home" is pretty much about exactly that, while the closer on here, "I Love You So Much It Hurts", which was a single to the album, is pretty much a ballad and ode dedicated to her son. And between these cuts, there are lots of reflections that Kali writes into these songs where she's pretty much thinking about everything it's taken to get her life to the point where it is now, whether it be all of the romantic betrayal she's experienced or how she's grown less bottled up and reserved with her love and with her emotions on "Lose My Cool".

There's also "It's Just Us", where in a spare couple of lines, she references being kicked out of her home at a very early age and then having to make it on her own, essentially. Kali really is wearing her heart on her sleeve on a lot of tracks here and possibly being the most upfront she's been on an entire album. On one song here, she is a self-admitted old-school romantic, and I can certainly hear that coming across on these tracks more than any other batch of songs in her discography so far, as a lot of the writing and melodies on this record are borrowing from or trying to recreate the sensation of these very vintage ultra sentimental love ballads, whether it be some jazz stuff or soul or pop, even some very saccharine and sappy adult contemporary to an extent, I would say. But it's all wrapped in this very dreamy, sweet, atmospheric, lightly alternative and indie-coated, sometimes, production. Beach House vibes, anyone?

I would even go as far as to say that there are some Lana Del Rey parallels going on here sonically, too, because we do have a lot of tracks here that feature similarly slow, syrupy, guitars and arranged instrumentation. There are also some tunes where Kali is just going full nostalgia mode, such as on "All I Can Say", which really does bring back a classic girl group type sound, which is a vibe her vocals actually work into really, really well. The string-kissed "Daggers" is also nice change of pace, instrumentally. It's a pop soul cut with some dusty boombap beats hanging in the background.

Meanwhile, "Silk Lingerie" and "Territorial", both tracks that are alluring and sinister and mysterious, like a Bond theme, something like that, especially the latter of the two, which is literally about what it says it is ("When I stake my claim on my lover my partner / I get territorial / Don't try me / I'm graceful, but the moment you're encroaching on my space.")

But yeah, as Kali is writing these songs and performing them, there's very solid and sweet and palatable production and melodies all around.

But if there are some shortcomings with some tracks on this album, it's that the material here can occasionally come across a little one note or unmemorable or maybe even lacking in a thoughtful structure or something like that. For example, "Lose My Cool" goes into this really strange bridge shift that goes off into a totally different musical section of the song that really does drag on. Meanwhile, "It's Just Us" feels like there It could have been more to it, but it fizzles out at the very end without, I think, really finalizing the tune all that well. There's also "Fall Apart", which I think lyrically could have been a highlight on the record because it really does tee things up for this theme, this concept of I'm being loved for who I am and being appreciated, even though I'm not always perfect, and sometimes I do falter, I do fall apart, I do have issues like any person. But the track just reads more as a general love song and doesn't get super specific about those dark or low moments that might challenge a relationship.

The tracklist also is persistently hitting you with all this super lush, atmospheric instrumentation, which I think is fine for a track or two, but the consistency of this sound does tend to make some of these songs bleed together.

And while this instrumentation does provide some very beautiful moments and passages on this project, Kali's voice is very soft and subtle a lot of the time. And to hear her singing persistently competing with the sound of just all of these layers, it's not really all that great. I think it takes away from how good the singing can be sometimes, which again, I think is much better showcased on cuts that are a little bit more skeletal or stripped back, like on "All I Can Say", where her voice really is the focal point, or during moments like "Lose My Cool" that I mentioned earlier, because in the first half of that track, vocally speaking, Kali really is losing her cool and delivers probably the most passionate performance on the entire record.

So vocal performances that were a little bolder here and there would have been nice, and I think would have made for a stronger LP, along with some more instrumental palettes that aren't always bleeding together in this very atmospheric fashion.

But outside of that, I feel like this record is loaded with highlights. You could say it's Kali's most mature and personal project yet. Certainly one where she wanted to just convey the prettiest and most refined sounds that she possibly could. For the most part, I think she gets that across while also effectively exploring this new chapter of her life much of the time, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 7 on it.

Anthony Fantano. Kali Uchis. Forever.