Music review: More of the same has Khalid treading water on third album

Mark your calendars – summer 2024, Khalid became less of a singer-songwriter and more of a vibe. The Texan artist’s 16 tracks “Sincere” are a collection of beautiful harmonies and airy, spare rhythms, melting together like a sticky popsicle on the dashboard.

It’s a song you should listen to on a dark highway, on the way home, after staying up all night, with your headlights on and your hands surfing the summer air as the sun rises again. Whatever Khalid is singing about – drug addiction, depression, love, breakups, freezing cold and soaring temperatures, loud or sober – it simply moves on without leaving a trace.

“Sincere” marks Khalid’s first full-length project since his 2019 release, “Free spirit,” — with the fantastic singles “Talk” and “Better” — an album that was selected among AP’s top collections in 2019.

The new one probably won’t make anyone’s 2024 list, perhaps because we’ve learned what to expect from Khalid or perhaps because the artist is just treading water.

There are some excellent songs – “Lifted”, with its lazy guitar lick, and the energetic “Everything We See” – but the cumulative effect is numbness. Many songs come and go without a noticeable difference. The whispered prayer “Broken” leads into the ghostly harmonies of “Who’s There To Pick Me Up.” Even Khalid’s attempts to change his vocals – like on “Ground”, sung partially through clenched teeth – can’t shake us out of our laziness.

Though he’s known for collaborating with everyone from Halsey to Kane Brown, Khalid again keeps the guest list light here, with only Arlo Parks turning the album into something intriguing on “Breathe.” He clearly needs her much more than she needs him.

Songs like “Tainted” “Adore you,” “Long Way Home” and “Heatstroke” would be home runs on anyone else’s album, but here they’re mostly fillers – very familiar colors, atmospheres, and moods.

“I never thought it would end so quickly,” he sings on the final song, “Decline.” He’s talking about lost love, of course, but it could just as well describe the whole of “Sincere.” It has vibrations, but no soul.

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Mark Kennedy is in ___

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