If Ariana Grande is pop’s Barbarella, then Kali Uchis is surely its Pussy Galore. The Los Angeles-based 26-year-old specialises in slow-jam hybrids of shimmering soul, lipgloss-sticky funk, sugary R&B and syrupy trap-pop with (you get the consistency) a Y2K hyperreal sheen. Her EP from April this year didn’t sound that far off Grande’s Positions. Embracing her Colombian heritage with her first fully Spanish release – her name translates as Without Fear (of Love and Other Demons), plus, for the hell of of it, an infinity symbol – Uchis’s follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 breakthrough Isolation makes a superb bid for the Bond soundtrack with her belting cover of Cuban singer La Lupe’s Qué Te Pedí. Equally cinematic is the trip-hop of Vaya Con Dios, in which she sings seductively over what sounds like Portishead’s Sour Times.

It’s a shame that these bursts are few and far between: for the most part, this album deals in a sort of muffled, dreamy malaise (floaty reggaeton, noncommittal bangers), a style reminiscent of Spain’s Bad Gyal, and ticks off 2020 pop’s now customary list of girl-on-girl tonguing (in the video for single La Luz), lowercase tracklisting and a Rico Nasty guest feature. This album doesn’t feel much like Uchis’s artistic step-up, her Norman Fucking Rockwell or El Mal Querer, but more like a suck-it-and-see step on – a hastily released album that suggests her best is yet to come.

• This review was amended on 13 January 2021 to clarify that the album is reminiscent of Bad Gyal, rather than directly influenced by the Spanish artist as an earlier version suggested.