Album Review: Kelela Radiates on In the Blue Light

Kelela recently released In the Blue Light, a set that glows from the inside out, its edges soft and intentional, its movement slow but never stagnant. Every sound is placed with care and every vocal turn artfully measured. The production holds steady in its own atmosphere, keys drifting in slow waves, and bass notes landing in natural strums or machine-made pulses. This is music that exists in the spaces between: slipping through cracks instead of breaking through walls.

The tension settles in early. Opening tune "Enemy" drifts in on a tide of perfectly layered voices. Beneath the gauzy notes is a looping harp melody that never fully settles into an easy to catch pattern. You see early that the vocal work on this set is as much about control as it is about emotion. Our leading lady knows when to let her voice sink into the blankets of sound surrounding her. But she also knows when to rise up straight and fill up the room with grander notes. 

One of my favorite numbers on the album, a sweet sun-shower called “Take Me Apart”, really highlights this gift. Sounds and melodies curl in on themselves then dissolve into something new. Before you can get your bearings inside the beauty of it all, it comes to an end. Afterwards we hear our hostess formally welcoming the crowd to the show. After talking about her personal connection to the legendary Blue Note club, the curtains rise on the elegant “Bankhead”. It's classical music that moves in loops, each repetition stretching the song wider rather than wearing it down. The rhythm stays locked in as Kelela’s voice circles it, brushes in close, then floats back out to the edges.

From there, the set shifts into something more meditative. “Waitin’” brings in a neo-soul styled groove with organic percussion and a stack of harmonies curling around Kelela's lead. Then “30 Years”, originally recorded by Betty Carter, follows with an aching elegance. The arrangement is stripped down to piano, upright bass, and brushed drums. Kelela conveys the vulnerability of the late great jazz legend's songwriting, expressing the weight of a heart left in the lurch. 

Another highlight of the album, the delicate-as-an-ember piano ballad titled “Love Notes", is also another nod to Betty Carter. Kelela's vocals barely rise above a whisper at times but there isn't a second where she doesn't glow like a full moon in the sky. So while its arrival kind of announces the album's final act, to me this tune is the high point of In the Blue Light. It's a deeply moving, full-circle moment for a young artist with an absolutely beautiful old soul.  

Kelela and company fill out the rest of In the Blue Light with genre-melding hands. Eclectic-electric tracks like "Better" and "Raven" hover just above the ground on stretched-out synth pads and harps, while cuts like "All The Way Down" and the album closer "Cherry Coffee" could seriously be mistaken for Janet Jackson/Aphex Twin mashups. Not every moment lands with a soul-moving impact, but when it does, it’s undeniable. More than anything, this album cements Kelela’s place among performers who inhabit their songs fully, intentionally, and with the kind of grace that feels borrowed from another era.