Kali Uchis’s 2024 Spanish-language album Orquideas offered a soothing balm for a world in chaos, and the mood enveloping her English-language follow-up, Sincerely, is even more blissful. The album opens with a lush arrangement of cinematic strings and harp, with Uchis imploring, “Hey, could you quiet down?” The song, “Heaven Is a Home…,” takes cues from ’60s girl groups, its snapping snares and guitar chords soaked in reverb and Uchis’s backing vocals so heavily layered that they sound like humming. Strings and guitar shimmer like billowing clouds, finding space between classic R&B and dream pop.
While Orquideas was a commanding exploration of various Latin subgenres and styles, Sincerely is more focused. But the album isn’t solely a nostalgic vision. Modern influences abound on “Silk Lingerie,” which employs quietly pattering programmed drums, while the breakbeats that drive the first half of “Angels All Around Me” bolster Uchis’s laidback vocals. The retro references are vaporous, even spacey. Only the doo-wop-tinged “All I Can Say” ventures into pure pastiche, complete with intermittent, lovelorn spoken interludes.
Uchis embraces, albeit wistfully, the pleasures of stability throughout Sincerely. On “Lose My Cool,” she refers to herself as an old-school romantic, but if her embrace of traditional love tropes verges on sentimental—both “Sugar, Honey, Love” and album closer “ILSYMIH” nod to the recent birth of her son—the evocation of a threatening outside world is a reminder of how hard-won her happiness is. On “Sunshine & Rain,” Uchis asks, “Whatever happened to the human race?/Did everyone’s minds get melted and deranged?”
Despite Uchis’s history of successful collaborations (with Tyler, the Creator, Peso Pluma, Karol G, Daniel Caesar, among others), there are no guest artists here—Sincerely is the artist’s show alone. And rather than feeling monotonous, the album’s measured tempos and heavy reverb establish a singular, potent mood: These are torch songs about transforming heartbreak into contentment. By album’s end, its case for the comforts of love is undeniable.
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