Album Review: Kai Williams – Dark

There is a belief that mirrors tend to show us our true selves, but on Dark, the debut album from Kai Williams, that isn’t always the case.

Mirrors gives us our first insight into the world of the album: smooth dark pop with an R&B/trap flavour that is full of poise and an easy sophistication, but what you don’t detect is happiness. Williams sings that all life is a mirror – and you can’t help but think the subject of the lyrics doesn’t like what they see. Someone Else similarly looks at uncertainty, a feeling that the perfect image is already fading.

Troublemaker explores the vicissitudes of relationships, a smooth number where the protagonist expresses doubt as to whether they can be the person a potential lover wants them to be. It’s haunting and emotive; the lyrics repeat as conversations without conclusion often do, with no resolution as pain and uncertainty continue.

Even when the album takes a foray into the trappings of success, as on Louis Vuitton, the arrangement doesn’t feel celebratory. As full and warm as the production sounds, it has a sadness to it, portrayed in the vocals, leaving you wondering if there is any happiness under the glitter and gold associated with the track’s reflection on the nature – and substance – of wealth.

Sooner Later and Driver could be documents of that self-image falling apart, the need for love causing confidence and assertiveness cracking. The illusion of control is possibly a façade here, as if we are seeing the person behind the mask. Yes, there are allusions to success, but they are less confident. The car as a metaphor appears later on the album on Fast Car – not a cover version – and it works more as a symbol for escape than a life of luxury.

Red Line explores relationships, ones that are flawed, relayed via a suitably haunting array of synths that are allied with a light and catchy pop chorus. The mood becomes sombre on The Pole, again the high life revealing fractures, love finding its way through artifice. In other circumstances, this would probably be recorded as a pop banger, but the joy is stripped away by the pain in the lyrics. Paralyzed follows that theme: love is dysfunctional but seems preferable to any alternatives. When you get to Yuko, however, the only track seemingly named after a person, you can suddenly think that maybe, just maybe, a better way forward is in view.

The themes of Dark, which Williams refers to as covering “toxic relationships, nightlife, luxury, lust, and emotional emptiness,” cross over between songs and indicate a linear progression from a life of pleasure to one where the narrator finds a sense of self-reflection and realisation that life needs something more. That is noticeable on Bad to You and Losing on You, where it appears that existence needs substance, and the time for that might be now.

Dark was released on the 8th of May and can be heard on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music. For other listening options, as well as learning more about the artist, connect with Kai Williams on Instagram.