With her latest EP, ‘TRU’, Aliza Li delivers exactly that: a three-track journey into the heart of self-realisation, radiant vulnerability, and the subtle textures of healing. The result is at once intimate and expansive, a testament to music’s power as both confession and liberation.
Aliza has always carried a storyteller’s pulse, but ‘TRU’ feels different. Its compositions are lean yet immense in spirit, capturing the delicate balance between personal revelation and universal resonance. She thrives on weaving sultry textures and introspective lyricism into timeless soundscapes, blending R&B, neo-soul, and poetic songwriting into music that heals, uplifts, and liberates. Across these tracks, she aligns not with fleeting trends but with the enduring current of soul, threading together warmth, honesty, and transformation.
Encompassing stunning vocals, gut-wrenching harmonies, storytelling, and channelling intense emotions of love, loss, and the search for clarity, ‘TRU’, offers a sense of healing in many forms. It captures the beauty of catharsis through sound, pulling listeners into Aliza’s orbit where raw honesty becomes a source of strength.
The opening track, ‘Call Tru’, is less an introduction than a declaration. Its production is stripped just enough to foreground her voice, a voice that trembles not from fragility but from conviction. Here, Aliza acknowledges the weight of old cycles while daring to step into new alignment. ‘Call Tru’ resonates like an oath, one signed not with ink but with breath, with intention. It is the sonic equivalent of standing in front of a mirror and choosing oneself without apology.
From this raw, grounding beginning, the EP lifts into ‘Glow’. If the first track is about shedding, this one is about blooming. The song pulses with warmth, layered harmonies, and an undeniable sense of uplift. Aliza sings not only as someone basking in her own light but as a guide reminding listeners of their own. Her vocal delivery here evokes the fluid ease of Cleo Sol, the soulful clarity of Alex Isley, and the sensual resonance of Ari Lennox. Yet, what’s most striking is how uniquely hers it feels: radiant without ostentation, intimate yet universal. ‘Glow’ embodies emotional clarity, the gentle ecstasy of trusting oneself after long seasons of doubt.
The closer, ‘Occasionally Telepathic’, shifts the mood entirely, reminding us that healing is rarely linear. Its title alone teases the complexity of connection, those uncanny moments of synchronicity, those haunting loops of memory and emotion. The track is both shadowed and luminous, a portrait of resilience in the face of life’s cyclical patterns. Aliza leans into the haunting textures, allowing dissonance and melancholy to coexist with grace. This is where her artistry feels most daring: not in presenting healing as a polished destination, but as a perpetual motion: messy, beautiful, and alive.
Together, the three tracks of ‘TRU’ form a cohesive arc: from self-confrontation, to radiant awakening, to the acceptance of complexity. The EP plays like a conversation between the body and the spirit, the individual and the collective, the pain of the past and the promise of the present.
What makes Aliza Li’s work so compelling is her refusal to dilute emotion. She writes and sings with a poetic intimacy that transforms personal reflection into shared catharsis. The sultry textures of her soundscapes feel timeless, while her lyricism carves out spaces for listeners to pause, reflect, and breathe.
‘TRU ' is a ritual of honesty, a soulful exploration of authentic living, and a reminder that freedom often begins where truth is finally spoken. With this release, Aliza Li illuminates throughout this EP in a delicate and empowering way.
Danielle Holian
Image: ‘TRU’ Official EP Cover