Kali Uchis’ records tend to feel like a breeze, even when the Colombian American singer-songwriter drifts between styles and languages. But Sincerely,, her latest album, seals itself into her very own paradise. Though it elicits many of the same pleasures as 2024’s Orquídeas, it feels like a world apart: the album boasts no guest features, with the majority of the songs growing out of voice notes and sung entirely in English. Its dreamy, timeless euphoria may scan as one-dimensional, but there’s delight in hearing Uchis luxuriate in the transformations of her life, still admitting insecurities while letting the good parts bleed together. Her music often feels sun-kissed; here, she soaks it all up.
1. Heaven is a Home…
The album begins with a moment of striking introspection, one that quickly frames its homey, contained soundworld. “Hey, could you quiet down?” Uchis sings. “There’s too many sounds/ And the world could really use some rest.” With a string arrangements that hark as far back as the ‘50s, her swooning voice stands out yet blends into the production, which makes domestic bliss – by now a familiar theme for Uchis – indistinguishable from the divine. “This is a story of a girl,” she concludes, “Who was once imprisoned by her own mind/ And freedom’s never felt this good.” The song really does hint at something claustrophobic at first, but Uchis turns things around.
2. Sugar! Honey! Love!
A seamless segue into a song about losing one kind of family only to find – or build – another. But even a track about generational trauma can fly right over your head when it’s Uchis’ impeccable harmonies stringing the theme along.
3. Lose My Cool,
Uchis indulges in her longest song to date – and one of her most compelling – with ‘Lose My Cool’ – which is split into two parts. The first part expands on the romantic vision of the previous two songs through a conversational lens, with Uchis singing, “I want to keep the world away ’cause you’re so precious to me/ I hate the world today, but it will not be the death of me.” By contrast, the resonant dream pop of the second part feels almost jarring, as Uchis intimates feelings of instability and loneliness beyond her control. It’s sincerity without a hint of artifice.
4. It’s Just Us
And when I say dream pop, I mean actual dream pop – you could mistake this for a Still Corners track were it not for Uchis’ voice. The “us” here dissolves into more introspective talk in the second verse, in which she sings, “The things that used to drive me out my mind turned meaningless/ Had to learn to rearrange my mind and be in peace.” This is the story laid out in the beginning, and you get how meaning – the dull, heavy kind – can get sucked out so easily when so much beauty’s involved.
5. For: You
Uchis leans back toward more nostalgic R&B territory, and though the song itself trades in a bit too many cliches, the chorus is strong enough to keep you engaged.
6. Silk Lingerie,
Uchis naturally slows things down for the slinky ‘Silk Lingerie,’ which sprays airy programmed drums underneath her relaxed yet exacting vocals. Even when things seem precise-engineered to glide down smoothly, the singer is riddled with anxiety. “How did you fall for someone complicated and flawed/ As me? I don’t know how you do it,” she sings. You can’t help but fall for the music much in the same way.
7. Territorial
The track boasts one of the record’s most resplendent melodies, one Uchis accentuates with plenty of “mm-mm”s and “da-dum”s. It’s needed to back up the graceful conviction she carries throughout the song, which, save for a clumsy line or two (“Oncе I claim my territory/ I get territorial”), features the perfect marriage of writing and delivery. “Damn, I need some discipline,” she sings, like discipline’s just been dropped; she then “talk[s] like an angel,” but the devil’s on her shoulder as soon as she says the word. Better stay on her good side.
8. Fall Apart,
A sumptuous bass line and psychedelic guitar blanket the vulnerability of the song, in which Uchis recognizes her moments of weakness as much as the love she receives in spite, and in the midst, of them. It’s got one of the best bridges on the record.
9. All I Can Say
The song is as unapologetic about the life Uchis leads as it is in embracing a classic girl-group sound, which would come off as pastiche were it not for her distinctive performance.
10. Daggers!
Uchis switches things up with a song about protecting her homegirl from a horrible relationship; her love shines as brightly as it does on the more romantic songs, as if to illustrate her friend’s spirit. It’s her final words, as the dust clears, that hit the hardest: “You cried an ocean at this point/ I’m just a message in a bottle/ In the ocean of your tears.”
11. Angels All Around Me…
After a trio of 3:07 songs, Uchis sublimates in another multipart composition – and, of course, her own happiness. Just as she assures herself that “divinе protection keeps us safe from harm,” the second half finds her praying that it endures for her family and loved ones. “Let them sing and laugh infinitely,” she pleads, capturing infinity, too, in a bottle.
12. Breeze!
More like ‘Breeze :)’, but otherwise a fitting title. The choir’s a highlight on this one.
13. Sunshine & Rain…
If you were to listen to one song from the record, it would be ‘Sunshine & Rain’, which sums it all up like the perfect single. It also highlights Uchis’ tendency to get darker in the second verse: “Whatever happened to the human race?/ Did everyone’s minds get melted and deranged?” she wonders. Someone else’s heart, she posits, may undo the damage.
14. ILYSMIH
The record closes with one of its gauziest songs, but no amount of studio trickery can disguise the pure emotion at its heart. An ode to her son, it lends credence to the album’s whole framework: how meaning and darkness can dissolve in an instant, why every song needs to feel like a warm embrace. “All the world is crazy, but you’re here/ My baby made me realise that nothing else even matters,” she sings. A child’s laughter ends the song, as if echoing into eternity.
