‘Isolation’: An album with futuristic flare

After the highly anticipated release of Kali Uchis’ first ever album, “Isolation”, was released it left many on Twitter tweeting about how they were vibing, and feeling themselves and honestly – that’s exactly what this album does. It’s got a mixture of all sorts of genres in each song. Leaving a futuristic vibe, while managing to give a flashback of what music once was, is what Uchis managed to do with such ease.

This album had the full potential of being absolutely amazing with the different types of vibes a person could easily feel while listening to each and every song, but it fell short. Uchis added two interludes into the album, that were unnecessary. Why add two? One is enough.

When an artist places interludes in their albums it’s normally just one; however, Uchis throws in two into this fifteen track album and there was no reason to. Without the “Gotta Get Up – Interlude” and the “Coming Home – Interlude” the album would have flowed without the interruption of the 1:52 minute and 2:40 minute interludes.

“Isolation” was kicked off with “Body Language -Intro” which set the tone of the entire album and gives the listener an idea of what type of music they’re about to immerse themselves into. It can easily give the illusion of being on a tropical beach, lounging around while enjoying a nice summer day with a drink in hand. “Miami”, featuring BIA, followed after, and was at a much slower tempo but the beat of the song was still enough to give off that futuristic yet pop vibe with lyrics that were fun and morphed well with the beat. It also still gave that illusion to a person (if they listened to this song in a relaxed environment) that they were on a beach.

Songs like “Just A Stranger” featuring Steve Lacy, “Nuestro Planeta” featuring Reykon, “Dead To Me” and “In My Dreams” all flowed in a much more faster tempo with lyrics that showed hints of what Uchis is really capable of. “Nuestro Planeta” is a song sung completely in Spanish aka a fresh of breath of air considering she is Colombian who can speak the native language. It also shows that she isn’t afraid of adding a few songs here and there that aren’t all in English. “Tomorrow” was another song that added a bit of Spanish in it with the mixture of her English lyrics, which honestly went together smoothly because of the story she was telling with this song alone. Both “Just A Stranger”, “Dead To Me”, and “Killer” are songs more on the side of Uchis showing she could care less about past relationships that were clearly toxic to her.

There were ballads of romance in this album as well with songs like “Flight 22”, “Your Teeth In My Neck” and “Feel Like A Fool” that sort of felt like they shouldn’t have been in this album and sort of felt like it was just scattered in between songs. While the lyrics were catchy and possibly even easy to memorize they just didn’t mix well with the rest of the songs that weren’t necessarily all about the type of romance she wanted or was looking for

Two songs that Uchis had previously already released yet somehow added them to the list of songs on this album were, “Tyrant” featuring Jorja Smith and “After The Storm” featuring Tyler, The Creator and Bootsy Collins. The first song sort of meshed well with her music that was previously released on her EP called “Por Vida”, whereas the latter was just more of a collaboration with Tyler, The Creator that was okay, but didn’t necessarily mesh with the rest of the songs on “Isolation”.

While the album did fall short due to her one too many interludes and songs feeling out of place, there was still a hint of influence from her previous music on her first EP. It’s refreshing to see that Uchis doesn’t change her ways of how she wants her music to sound in terms of tempo and beats and lyrics as well. Just like she is unique, so is her music and that’s one of the reasons she sticks out to many. Uchis isn’t your typical artist who tries hard to be liked by critics and fans; she does what she does for herself and because she truly enjoys the craft.

After giving “Isolation” a listen twice and fully immersing myself into each song, I’d give this a entire album a rating of a B+. If it wasn’t for those damn interludes and songs feeling out of place, this could of very well been an A+.