Gigi Perez pours her life experience into her work. After the viral success of her 2024 single “Sailor Song”—an open plea for queer romantic connection that topped the UK singles chart and went platinum in several other countries—her self-produced debut album plays like unabashed memoir. “Sugar Water” opens with a nod to Perez’s birthplace of Hackensack, New Jersey before recounting schoolyard taunts and even the texture of her childhood Barbie’s hair. Her sister Celene’s death in 2020 sits at the center of “Fable,” with both that song and the closing title track featuring voicemails left by Celene. Perez also unpacks that family tragedy on the darker “Survivor’s Guilt,” while the album’s title was inspired in part by Perez sleeping on the beach after her sister died. The emotive singing and busker-style folk balladry of Perez’s earlier releases is very much at play, though lilting strings interweave with the acoustic guitar on “Crown” and the especially surprising “Twister” adds Auto-Tune and a programmed beat. But again, the lyrics are most often the star here, with the singer-songwriter revisiting her intense religious upbringing alongside love, loss, and other weighty themes.
