Portland quartet Kallai (pronounced call-eye) release their debut album We Are Forever via Little Cloud Records. Introduced by a series of singles that established their sharp approach to shoegaze and dreampop, the album delivers on its promise, becoming a confident, forward-looking statement that reinforces the genre’s continued relevance.
Kallai's debut strikes the right chord between post punk edge, dreampop intimacy, and powerful shoegaze textures. The band tackles the chaos of life under increasing oppression in eight tracks, highlighted by connections, and personal realizations. With layered guitar swells, smooth harmonies, string sections blended with electronic flourishes, and a subdued piano, the sound is lush and detailed.
Through these eight carefully constructed tracks, Kallai lean into introspection, pairing poignant lyricism with haunting melodic lines to evoke a sustained sense of wistfulness. The previously released singles, Always/Never, The Wave, and Falling, form the emotional spine of the record, anchoring its thematic weight. Still, the album doesn’t rely solely on familiar highlights. Its strength also lies in its brevity and consistency. At 38 minutes, the album resists indulgence, choosing instead to foreground its luxuriant instrumental arrangements and the quiet sentimentality that threads through each composition. It just provides an immersive pull as a whole, without the need for extravagant gestures.
The album opens with The Hymn / The Beautiful Ones, a track that unfolds with ritualistic intent, setting the emotional and musical tone for what follows. Amor Occidit Omnia arrives with sharp impact, and its concept rooted in the cruelty of violence against women, framed as preparation for a brutal world. Protector drifts into feverish dream territory, its classic dreampop sensibilities rendered with charm and precision. Another World expands the same palette further, steeped in neo-psychedelic haze which blends immaculately with the band’s shoegaze foundation, offering one of the album’s most entrancing moments.
The trilogy of the aforementioned previously released singles takes its place mid-album, offering a sense of familiarity for early listeners and grounding the record’s emotional arc. The closing track, As Night Falls, distills the album’s sentiment into stark imagery and melodic allure, culminating in a kind of spiritual declaration. The final song's lyrics echo the title and central themes of We Are Forever, positioning the song in a quiet but unmistakable way as the band’s defining statement.
“I wrote this record in the wake of last year’s elections as I grappled with what it means to be a mixed-race queer woman in a time where political movements in power want to erase people like me and destroy our history,” says vocalist and guitarist Cate Hukle. “We Are Forever is about saying we have always been here, we will always be here, and no amount of abuse or propaganda will change that for long.”
The recording process for We Are Forever spanned Revolver Studios with Collin Hegna (The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Federale) and the band’s own Synthetikit Studio, capturing the momentousness of its conception and the insight of its execution. Over the course of two months, the album formed by both personal and political instability, and became an innate quest for hope in the face of decline.
Kallai's debut full length invites a kind of submersion with its textures and themes unfolding like reflections. As the record moves, it mirrors sentiment with quiet precision, allowing each listener to find their own character within its emotional outline.
ZR