Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Oracle Sisters, 22Twenty records 2023.
I love this debut album from French trio Oracle Sisters. The album was recorded on the island of Hydra, Greece, in 2020, when the band found themselves stranded by COVID.
No boats were coming in or leaving.
I can think of many worse places to be stranded.
I spent a month there in the late 1980s and it was a highlight of a four-month European odyssey.
We walked the island searching for the places that Leonard Cohen frequented only to discover after we left that we were staying just around the corner from his house.
We drank the best Retsina on the island, which tasted just like the worst retsina, and ate the best seafood I’ve ever tasted.
The Oracle Sisters are Frenchmen Lewis Lazar and Christophe Willatt, and Finnish musician Julia Johansen and they too explored the narrow, cobbled, streets of Hydra.
Being stuck there through October and November 2020 they took the opportunity to record their debut album in the Old Carpet Factory.
They experienced the last days of autumn and the onset of winter and believe me Hydra can get very cold.
Many of the songs on the album were written on the island and others were completed there.
They said that they knew when they’d come up with a good song because the ghost of the old factory would flicker the lights in appreciation. The lights must have flickered a lot.
This is a beautiful, delicate, album that refuses to be categorized but I’ll have a go.
It’s a blend of French provincial folk and indie pop/rock that is fresh, and pleasantly different from just about every album I’ve listened to recently.
The band has resisted the pressure to adapt their sound to fit in with the expectations of modern pop playlists, and the album is all the better for it.
They say a change is as good as a holiday and the Oracle Sisters certainly made the most of their extended visit to Hydra.
