Music reviews: Morgan Wallen and Kali Uchis
Credit Morgan Wallen's ongoing domination of Billboard's album chart this decade to "a particular strain of the modern American mood," said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. "The love-me-or-leave-me attitude that animates his glowering songs is as American as apple pie," and the country megastar's new two-hour album plays that particular tune about three dozen times. The 32-year-old Tennessee native knows he's misbehaved more than once when he's been drinking, and he never pretends he's about to change. Some people love that; some hate it. The haters may miss that Wallen's polished country rock is "well-crafted and hooky while not being immune to the occasional stylistic left turn." The 37 songs on I'm the Problem are "mostly about consequences, which also makes them interesting," said Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker. Sure, some lines are "unbearably corny," and the music is "utterly faceless." But Wallen is almost always "singing out the ways love can sour," exuding "the unpredictable energy of a wounded animal." Besides, he has "a kind of uncanny magnetism that can elevate a mediocre song."
Kali Uchis is "a master of atmosphere," said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. The Colombian American singer "makes music that hangs in the air like a cloud of smoke," whether she's mining hip-hop-inflected soul or Latin club music. On her lush fifth studio album, she "goes even deeper into dreaminess, landing in a place best described as ambient R&B." The opener, "Heaven Is a Home," is about love and family, but the "swooning effect" of Uchis' vocals mixing with 1950s-style strings is "so transporting that the lyrics are easy to miss." Give Sincerely a close listen, though, and you'll discover that the album contains "her most revealing lyrics yet," said Suzy Exposito in the Los Angeles Times. The 30-year-old Grammy winner wrote these songs while reconciling with her terminally ill mother and preparing to give birth herself, and each track reads like a letter to someone she has loved. Sincerely is mildly monotonous, "like other people's happiness can be," said Alfred Soto in Pitchfork. Still, Uchis can be counted on to deliver "candy-colored reveries and gossamer love-me-downs." In that realm, she "hits a peak on Sincerely."
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