Kallai releases debut album ‘We Are Forever’

Portland-based band Kallai have been staking their claim as an essential new act in the modern shoegaze scene, stitching together soundscapes that feel intimate and infinite. Formed in 2023, the band’s approach to alternative music is cinematic and emotionally charged, piecing together the dreamlike haze of shoegaze with the acidic edges of post punk and the brooding atmosphere of gothic rock. Within just a short time, they’ve been on the rise in the Pacific Northwest’s underground scene, pairing emotional intensity with a widescreen sense of sonic ambition.

While Kallai may be a new project, its members are far from newcomers; the group features David Gross, Daniel Henderson, Cate Hukle and Brian Wilcher who each bring with them years of experience from acclaimed acts such as Trance to the Sun, Luscious Apparatus and Lost Echoes. That collective background gives their music a sound that feels like its been built from the inside out to forge something entirely new.

Beyond their own releases, Kallai have also become active architects of their local scene as co-founders of the sell-out Dreamgaze PDX festival in 2024, they’ve helped cultivate a growing alt-gaze movement in Portland. The festival’s upcoming 2025 edition, now partnered with Tremolo Festival, is set to expand across multiple cities, a fitting move for a band who continue to explore the edges of the musical map.

In 2023, their debut single “Always/Never” provided a spellbinding introduction built on fuzzy guitars, hypnotic rhythms and hushed vocal delivery. More singles and their self-titled debut EP soon followed, offering four tracks that offered a balance of grandeur and reflection. Now they bring us their brand new debut album titled We Are Forever, an eight-track outing released through the Little Cloud Records imprint.

Set up by “The Hym / The Beautiful Ones,” the soft drift of metallic guitar textures and bubble of quiet vocal samples takes on a gentle rhythm before the strike of drums ushers in a subtly driving soundscape cut with soothing vocal leads. Deftly balancing murky instrumental tones with delicate vocals which stitch delicate melodies into the consuming musical fabric. “Amor Occidit Omnia” brings a hurried energy of bouncy drums and jittery guitar notes as moody vocals slice through the smokey arrangement.

“Protector” arrives with the wash of reverb-drenched guitars and airy vocals before taking flight with the chug of thick guitar chords and soaring vocals to cast a euphoric slice of engrossing shoegaze music. “Another World” eases the listener in with shuffling drums, warm basslines and jangly guitar notes with the song’s lilting rhythm and dreamy atmosphere creating a downtempo soft rock tone that feels simultaneously nostalgic and weightless. Their debut single “Always/Never” stands as a melancholic anthem built around fuzzy guitars and punchy drums, laying down a song that swells and contracts like a heartbeat, with choruses that burst open into walls of sound before pulling back into quietly shimmering verses.

“The Wave” delivers a track that shows the band at their most ambitious, both conceptually and sonically. Inspired by Susan Stryker’s essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix, a piece that reframes the “monster” of Frankenstein as a symbol of rage and alienation, the song channels that sense of misunderstood fury into a mesmerising soundscape. Cate’s ethereal vocals rise and fall through waves of reverb-soaked guitars, building from soft chords into a chorus that hits with a cathartic surge of power.

“Falling,” one of the album’s most affecting songs, pulls everything Kallai do best into a single, hypnotic composition where stacked harmonies evoke the spectral chemistry of acts like Slowdive as voices intertwine and dissolve into clouds of sound. String sections sweep and pianos drift around angular post punk style guitars, creating a sense of elegant dissonance. Closing the record with “As Night Falls,” the band offers one last moment of their uniquely absorbing shoegaze sound to conclude their magnificent debut record with a drifting finale.

Listen to We Are Forever below