We may well be able to explain rationally and scientifically that the human voice is merely a tangle of sounds produced by the vibrations of the vocal cords, but that will never be enough to understand the spell by which a particular voice touches you deep in your soul, whilst others simply go in one ear and out the other…

The voice of oda. certainly ticks the first box. This voice, heard in English, Serbian and now, increasingly naturally, in French, is that of Anna Bozovic. Fragile and powerful at the same time. Winding and direct. Moving and reassuring. Carried by the cotton-wool-like soundscapes of her collaborator Théo Noël-Apperry, the Angers-based duo have patiently woven, following a fine EP released in September 2024, the fabric of this debut album, due out in November 2026. It features songs that have been with them since 2022 (such as the hypnotic ‘I was talking about love’) and others composed just before they went into the studio (such as ‘chair’ or ‘the cloud’), yet there is not the slightest difference in intensity or freshness between them. Halfway between folk-pop and electronic music, oda.’s sound seems to have always known where it was heading, instinctively frolicking amongst wild grasses – a world into which Cat Power, Emiliana Torrini, Pomme or even the Cocteau Twins would no doubt happily immerse themselves.

You’ll therefore have guessed that the overall mood of oda.’s music easily veers towards melancholy. Most of these nine tracks are indeed misty ballads, somewhere between lullabies for adults and the melancholy of sleepless nights, yet you’ll find yourself playing them on repeat far more than you ought to. Endlessly.

For how can one resist the ethereal ‘what’s in my head’, that freefall into despair that is ‘my silence’, or ‘the cloud’, the album’s beautiful finale in the style of a Boards of Canada-esque reverie? How can one not succumb to the striking, combative poetry of ‘chair’ or the delicacy of ‘tout disparaîtra’? We should no doubt also mention the more pop-oriented tunes, such as the excellent ‘Le Lilas’ or the Björk-esque ‘L’Horizon’ (both of which have already been released as singles). We ought to talk about every single song. Above all, you simply have to listen to them.

In the beginning was the Word, so they say. We could be more precise. It was, rather, a voice…