Pop album reviews: PinkPantheress, Dargz, Kali Uchis

PinkPantheress
Fancy That
(Warner)

Last summer, UK garage-pop singer-producer PinkPantheress, born Victoria Walker, called a halt to her vertiginous rise from TikTok phenomenon to bona fide pop star by cancelling dates and retreating from the fray for health reasons. Clocking in at nine tracks, none of which hit the three-minute mark, it would be hard to call Fancy That – her latest mixtape – a truly substantial piece of work. But it does move her story on convincingly, out of the bedroom and towards the dancefloor with an injection of more club-centred sounds.

The early 2000s remains high in the mix. Known for her devil-may-care use of samples, PinkPantheress finds room here for Panic! at the Disco on the pumping-bassline tune Tonight (a highlight), while the equally nagging Girl Like Me gets its “Let it all go” refrain from Basement Jaxx’s Romeo.

If there is an overriding theme, the winkingly British title nods to it: romance looms large. Another banger, Stateside, is a deceptively breezy account of obsession. As ever, Walker’s productions are feather-light, but dense with Black British source materials (drum’n’bass, the two-step of Stars) with a dusting of hyperpop’s saccharine sang-froid. Though gossamer, PinkPantheress’s touch is sure. Kitty Empire

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke
Tall Tales
(Warp)

These are good times for Thom Yorke fans. Quickly following two albums by the Smile last year comes this hefty collaboration with electronic music pioneer Mark Pritchard. An hour-long project, with accompanying visuals by artist Jonathan Zawada, Tall Tales has been gestating for five years but really began in 2016 with Pritchard and Yorke’s mesmeric Beautiful People, one of the singer’s most interesting tracks away from Radiohead.

You may not be shocked to hear that Tall Tales shivers with the itchy unease Yorke’s fragile yet tensile voice suits so well. Violent ambient is the dominant mood, with the best tracks piling unsettling electronics around him (The Spirit) before unfurling heavy, echoey, kraken-roar bass (Bugging Out Again) or nightclub-at-the-end-of-the-universe beats (Ice Shelf, This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice).

Each track treats Yorke’s vocals in a slightly different way, which adds to the album’s slippery uncertainty alongside his lyrics - as fragmentary, allusive and alluring as ever. The record peaks around pretty siren song The White Cliffs (“please don’t look but you’re drowning,” he murmurs), with its strung-out strings and judicious use of space across eight perfectly crafted minutes. Damien Morris

Kali Uchis
Sincerely
(Capitol)

On Colombian American singer-songwriter Kali Uchis’s fifth album, she meticulously crafts a cocoon to protect herself from the outside world. “Hey could you quiet down, there’s too many sounds,” she pleads on luxe opener Heaven Is a Home, while the Minnie Riperton-esque 70s soul of Angels All Around Me… finds solace in spirituality. The mood is helped by the fact that Uchis could sing an instruction manual and still make it sound beautiful.

If gentle pleading isn’t enough to find the peace she needs to find the peace she needs, Uchis isn’t above going on the attack. Albeit softly. “It’s cool, I’ll be the villain in the story,” she sighs sarcastically on Territorial, an excellent Bond theme-in-waiting, all shimmering strings and cigar smoke. Laid-back lead single Sunshine & Rain…, meanwhile, works through bitterness (“Whatever happened to the human race? Did everyone’s brains get melted and deranged?”) before clawing closer to hard-won happiness.

Sincerely is an album to gently ease into, its secrets blossoming slowly. Occasionally you wish for more songs such as Fall Apart, where the silkiness is roughed up a bit, but it’s a minor quibble. Uchis has created a utopia you’ll be sad to leave. Michael Cragg

Dargz
Friends & Family
(Studio Dargz)

Since moving to London from his native New York in 2017, producer David Dargahi, AKA Dargz, has become a key collaborator within the city’s jazz scene. Bringing a hip-hop sampling mentality to his work with artists including drummer Moses Boyd and singer Poppy Ajudha, his 2023 debut album, Happiness, was an aptly joyous affair, featuring horn fanfares, chopped vocals and uplifting melody.

Dargahi’s return with Friends & Family widens the scope of his collaborators to include guitarist Oscar Jerome and rapper Nory. The sprightly melodies are plentiful, from the twinkling piano phrasing of Save You to an earworming vocal hook on Get It Right and the whistling refrain of Talk About It.

The cumulative effect of such an upbeat tone over 14 tracks can, however, become saccharine. Dargahi fares better when he explores darker textures, leaning into bass-driven hip-hop on Jerome feature Shedding, grooving through a lyrical saxophone solo on the mid-tempo Smiley, and peaking on Nory feature Stop Looking’s militaristic snare-drum backing. It’s in this grittier register that Dargahi finds fresh collaborative territory. Ammar Kalia