ALBUM REVIEW: Your Love Is Conditional – K. Soto

Embracing vulnerability and fragility, K. SOTO moves through the downfall of a relationship and the memory of it on Your Love Is Conditional. The album sets miscommunications and disconnection throughout a relationship to melodic indie rock soundscapes. Throughout this, K. SOTO offers conversational and honest storytelling, immersing you into an intimate portrait of love, loss and heartbreak.

Opening track Memorial Day is a slow introduction into the album’s melodic pace. Simple guitar patterns and synth effects echo in the background, with K. SOTO‘s voice standing firmly in the forefront. The track foregrounds the lyrical quality that characterises the album, introducing the album’s reflections upon the disconnection between two people. Following this, K. SOTO weaves the arch of this fractured relationship throughout Your Love is Conditional. Leave It Alone is a more confrontational musing upon both being haunted by memories and determining what you deserve from a relationship. The song has more of a beat behind it and lighter acoustic guitars, slightly lifting the sound.

For each moment of clarity and self-preservation, there is an equal sense of sadness and self-doubt. Your Love Is Conditional offers a constant pendulum between the two. Burdensome is stripped back, with simple synth melodies and beats offering a backing to the vocals. Lyrically, K. SOTO opens up about fears of weighing down someone, and this insecurity pierces through the entire track. Each track feels laced with intimately personal memories and reflections. Forgive Me finds K. SOTO reminiscing on memories, wondering about the lost love and reflecting on what may have gone wrong. Its gentle melody builds to a louder closing in its final chorus, offering a cathartic end to the first half of the album.

This personal touch on the album is central to its varying emotional currents. Coconut sits in the middle of the album and samples a voice note that reaches out for conversation. This is layered with K. SOTO‘s soft vocals and offers a wistful transition moment for the album as it moves into its second half. In this latter half, tracks Stuck and Detroit deal with how to move forward from the disconnection. They ponder on the future whilst still holding onto the past’s hauntings and regrets. Closing track Brick By Brick offers a moment of clarity to conclude the album. Continuing the theme of moving forward, K. SOTO considers all that may have contributed to the downfall of the relationship, but seems willing to move forward with the memories and the future co existing as one within his heart.

Throughout Your Love Is Conditional, K. SOTO‘s voice is the most important facet. Gentle melodic hooks will carry you into the album’s atmosphere, and at times this becomes quite predictable. But it is clear that the music is simply to set the atmosphere for the lyricism and storytelling of Your Love Is Conditional. Tracing a relationship’s downfall and reflecting on its varying personal implications, K. SOTO offers a vulnerable and personal approach to love, loss, regret, frustration and clarity that all coexist as one.

Rating: 7/10

Your Love Is Conditional is out now via Pure Noise Records. 

Follow K. Soto on Instagram.