Hayley Kiyoko - Expectations

The Guardian 80

(Atlantic)

She may have done her time on the Disney Channel, but that’s as close as 26-year-old Angeleno Hayley Kiyoko likes to hew to the standard pop backstory. Her airy, LA-dreamy debut album sounds sparklingly refreshing, with none of the usual suspects in its production credits, and Kiyoko’s own songwriting voice – frank, fun, fearlessly tussling with her emotions – floods through. Feelings sets out her open-hearted manifesto (“sorry that I care… sick and tired of acting all tough”) over fat bassline and light beats, her voice sweet and unshowy, but there’s more than just summer crush material here(though Palm Dreams takes a G-funky shot at joining the ranks of west coast-representin’ sunshine jams).

Any album that starts with an “overture” has more than average ambitions, and beyond the spry, fast-talking R&B confections of Curious and He’ll Never Love You and the adorable What I Need (with Kehlani) – feather-light in construction but deadly in their hooks – are songs of affecting subtlety, like the startling night-terror atmospherics of Mercy/Gatekeeper, in which a sleepless Kiyoko longs to “bang my head until I start to fly”.

Pitchfork 60

Hayley Kiyoko’s ambitious debut is at its best when it’s barbed and confrontational, but the former Disney star is still trying to hone her budding pop star identity.