According to astrologers and ancient mythology, a blood moon, or red moon, is a bad omen, a portent of natural disasters, economic catastrophes, or the death of a great patron. Luckily, a red moon is an infrequent occurrence: a full moon in total lunar eclipse, its deep, rusty glow reminding us that perfect alignments are rare. It’s this emblem of burning intensity and divinity that guides the genre-defying Colombian-American pop star Kali Uchis through Red Moon in Venus, her third studio album, and second sung mostly in English.
Uchis has spent the better part of the last decade redefining the boundaries of Latin pop music. She perfected a blend of R&B and pop on her acclaimed debut Isolation, then took that expansive versatility to the left on the Spanish-language album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otro Demonios) ∞, where she prescribed love as a powerful anti-anxiety medication. Watching her loungey psychedelic spirit evolve into confident, shapeshifting pop has been fascinating; a generation of fans have fallen under the spell of her experimental nostalgia music. She is like a modern day La Lupe: channeling music across cultures with a timeless aesthetic that allows her to fit any idea into her singular vision.
Red Moon in Venus luxuriates in the most sublime sounds of Uchis’ career. It’s a fantastical record, illustrating lush, lovesick vignettes and high-femme escapism without relinquishing control. Chirping birds, blooming flowers, and professions of love pepper “In My Garden” and lead single “I Wish you Roses,” two tender devotionals that set the album’s faithful vision of love ablaze. The album’s first half progresses like the early stages of a relationship: endless, saccharine, all-consuming. “Wanna spoil me in every way/It’s Valentine’s like every day,” she sings at the top of the pop-funk highlight “Endlessly.” Rose-tinted glasses? On. But only for a while.
Even at the album’s most picturesque, Uchis never loses her grip on reality, intent on exploring despair with equal intensity. “Fantasy,” featuring R&B star and Uchis’ romantic partner Don Toliver, is an Afropop dance number that ends the infatuation seen in the first half of the record. The song explores love at its most sensual and carefree: “On my body/Don’t let go of me/I just want the fantasy,” Uchis begs. But then she abruptly interrupts: “That’s it, that’s the end of the song—come on baby, let’s go home,” declaring the honeymoon phase over. R&B kiss-off “Deserve Me” is grounded by the realization that it’s better to be alone than to remain in a toxic situation. The undulating, Tame Impala-esque psychedelia of “Moral Conscience” rests on a wise and scornful foretelling: “When you’re all alone/You’ll know you were wrong.” Uchis maintains her sultry alto composure throughout, allowing the idyllic production to support what should be moments of deep rage. She’s cool and collected because she knows a better love awaits.
Uchis’ serenades are a warning to lovers everywhere, a way of owning her femininity in a culture that would cast it in a subordinate role. One moment she’s interpolating soul trio the Temprees (“Love Between”) and the next she’s taunting an ex that their new girl would eat her pussy if she let her (“Hasta Cuando”). Her confidence is reminiscent of others who often straddle the line between bad bitch and dedicated lover, like Beyoncé or Tinashe. In the video for “I Wish you Roses,” Uchis poses in a bed of pink flowers, making symbolic reference to a scene from the 1999 film American Beauty that explores a middle-aged man’s fatal obsession with a girl. Instead of focusing on demoralizing depictions of femmes fatales, “I Wish you Roses” emphasizes the desire to heal: “With pretty flowers can come the bee sting/But I wish you love,” she sings, reaffirming a soft yet firm hold over her lover and their destiny. Uchis knows the power of her sex appeal; instead of reifying it in the patriarchy, she finds reclamation and release in femininity.
Red Moon in Venus makes a case for allowing love’s every phase to wash over you like a powerful tarot reading. Uchis’ blissful melodies often call on the universe’s cosmic energies to deliver divine intervention and feeling. “See I’m praying God will send me an angel/Will the angels bring me back to you?” she coos over the smooth jazz-pop of “Blue.” In its shades of grief and desire, Red Moon in Venus asks us to feel the force of love’s power, whether for good or ill. One of its best moments, the gently spangled “Moonlight,” uses a principle of astrology—the moon as the center of inner emotional wisdom and divine femininity—as a space to relinquish love’s brutish gravity and give into the transcendence of possession. “I just wanna get high with my lover/Veo una muñeca cuando miro en el espejo kiss kiss,” she playfully asserts, more featherlight, liberated, and Cancer sun than ever. Kali Uchis’ music is a path towards a kind of spiritual enlightenment, but only if you open yourself to life’s most feminine energy.
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