Isai makes a soft, shimmering dream pop return on "All I Really Want," a track that drifts like a memory but strikes with the emotional blow of a love desired but elusive. At over three minutes long, the song is an immersive escape, enveloping you in its plush textures and fragile openness. "All I Really Want" is like diving into a daydream. The production is airy but deliberate, with long washes of ambient synths, guitars wrapped in echo, and a beat that throbs like a slow pulse. Isai builds a world in which time appears to warp, allowing you to float in the void between hope and hesitation.
The emotive heart of the song is in its performance. Isai's delicate, plaintive vocals float gently on this aural pond. Every phrase has a plaintiveness not in expression but in meaning. It's one of those lovely contradictions that dream pop is so good at, and it makes sadness feel sweet and soothing. Rather than pursuing an enormous crescendo or dramatic turn, Isai lets the new song breathe, shimmer, and swell in modest increments. That decision lends its sound an intimacy that feels almost uncomfortably personal, like a late-night confession to nobody in particular.
This song is for night drives, cloudy mornings, or spaces between relationships when the heart still searches for unresolved questions. The music is dreamlike but just crystallizes, and the feeling sets in further. With "All I Really Want," Isai doubles down on asserting its voice as a burgeoning pop side of things, one that's not afraid to be soft in a loud world. It may be a song of longing, but it provides something rare in the fast-forward cadence of today's stillness. This is a low-key triumph, a song written in whispers that listens like a snapshot.