7/10

There's something especially powerful about a breakup album that refuses to end in bitterness, and on 'Still Believe in Love', Chinese-Australian artist ANDI turns emotional collapse into one of his most ambitious statements yet. Across twelve tracks, he moves through longing, self-doubt, anger, desire and eventual release, building a record that feels like a complete emotional arc.

The album opens with ‘The love that i want’, where hope is still untouched and possibility remains wide open. From there, the title-track immediately sharpens the record’s central idea that love may wound, distort and disappoint, but he refuses to let those experiences harden him completely.

‘Stranger in the mirror’ turns inward, confronting identity and self-recognition, while ‘I didn’t lose you’ expands heartbreak beyond the loss of a person and into the collapse of an imagined future. Then ‘Do you even know’ pushes that vulnerability further, exploring the exhausting act of reshaping yourself in the hope of being accepted.

By the time ‘Fine without you’ arrives, the emotional temperature has changed. There's more steel in the writing, more distance, and a growing sense that self-preservation has finally begun to matter. Later tracks such as ‘Heartbeat’, ‘Love me right now’ and ‘Blow me away’ bring desire back into the frame, but now it feels more self-aware and more complicated.

What makes 'Still Believe in Love' especially compelling is how seriously ANDI treats the production itself as part of that emotional journey. After feeling that earlier versions had become too polished and disconnected from the intimacy he wanted, he rebuilt the project himself, giving the record an added sense of ownership and makes its close-mic vulnerability feel even more deliberate.

The final track ‘Take care’ lands with real grace. There's no grand revenge, no dramatic final victory, just the difficult acceptance that care can survive even when a relationship doesn't.

On this new release, ANDI has created a cinematic, vulnerable and impressively cohesive record about refusing to let heartbreak have the final word. Its most affecting message is also its simplest: that surviving love doesn't have to mean giving up on it.