JOSEPHINE FOSTER - Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You

It happens that you fall in love at first sight with an album cover and know for certain that the music inside will enchant you with the same beauty. "Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You" has a cover with a burnished background, dominated by the green lines of an allegory in which a woman, at the center of the image, seems to offer herself as a guide into the mystery of a nature that is at once familiar and arcane. Like a rarefied version of the art nouveau found in the psychedelic graphics of the sixties and seventies, but with an added sense of balance and a certain formal poise.

In the music held within this treasure chest there is a structural and arrangement-based freedom that recalls psychedelia, there is folk's attentiveness to a world stripped of ornament, there is an extreme stylization, in the abstract power of the operatic voice and the dry guitar strokes, that evokes the refinement of art nouveau with its slender, powerful and elegant arboreal curves stretching into an unreal space. The substance is that of a folk music out of time, with almost a sense of archaic magic hovering over the whole album. Thanks to the lyrics, which take on the forms and images of a poetry suspended between the symbolic, the pagan and the plainly popular, but above all thanks to the voice, which reveals itself from the very start as the most distinctive trait of this record, without taking anything away from the sobriety and beauty of the music.

Josephine studied opera singing and it shows, but she doesn't use her technique to prettify things or induce a dreamlike, oblivious effect as in the case of Cocorosie

But don't think that such a distinctive voice grows tiresome before the album ends - as one would expect, it's ready for variations that bring surprising contrasts of timbre and interpretation without undermining the work's unity. The arrangements are eclectic yet essential, sparse yet pulsing, graced by unusual choices that see voice and guitar accompanied by harp, bells, zither, castanets, kazoo, ukulele, sitar and wooden spoons among others. They're further elevated by a restrained sense of structure, rich in unexpected grafts and small variations, both in the arpeggios and in the very construction of some of the songs.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

30/04/2026