ODESSEY AND ORACLE - Technicolor

A string of announcements and dashed hopes: five years have passed since the first hints of a new album from French outfit Odessey & Oracle, the follow-up to that "Crocorama" which seemed to have finally opened the doors to recognition for the group led by Guillaume Medioni, Fanny L'Héritier (Bess Of Bedlam) and Alice Baudoin (percussionist Roméo Monteiro joined the lineup for the third album).
The story of Odessey & Oracle is, unfortunately, one we've seen all too often lately: financial difficulties and the unsustainable cost of their distinctive live performances (strings, horns and cumbersome instruments) have made it impossible to keep the band's unusual chamber-pop project going. Conceived as a final statement, "Technicolor" sat for years without a distributor, and it's only thanks to two independent labels (Another Record and Dur & Doux) that it is now finally seeing the light of day.

As fate would have it, a band that made nostalgia its creative manifesto has itself become an object of nostalgic devotion for the fans who have followed its evolution from 2014 to today; one might even call it karma, given that the band took its name from the title of one of the most ill-fated albums in rock history, the now-legendary "Odessey And Oracle" by the Zombies.
Guillaume Medioni and Fanny L'Héritier are the survivors of the original lineup, and for this recorded epitaph they've enlisted Mathilde Bouillot (flutes and synth) and Guillaume Bertrand (drums and percussion). "Technicolor" continues along the lines of the band's penultimate album, favoring pop lightness over the prog-rock leanings of their early work.

The yé-yé melodies of "Comme Disait Jean-Jacques Rousseau" and "Des Rêves En Cinémascope" are indeed sweet and breezy, perfect for the imaginary soundtrack to a Nouvelle Vague film; the harmonies are likewise intricate and full of thoroughly engaging vintage instrumental ideas, the same ones that, in the splendid "Temps De Cerveau," take on melancholy folk-jazz textures that fans of Robert Wyatt won't mind at all.
Particularly worth noting is the dialogue between Fanny's voice and the instrumentation driving the poetically naïf "Un voeu"; equally magical and beguiling is the carpet of synths and slightly dissonant vocals on "Les Belles Choses," though it's "Nouvelle Génération" that reaffirms the band's jazz and prog leanings with a web of harmonies and instrumental runs that enchants and seduces with the grace that has always set Odessey & Oracle apart.

With a tribute to the world of cartoons (“Walt Disney”), a nod to the orchestral splendor of their early days (“Grands Ensembles”) and a touch of library music scattered here and there (“Prelude #1”, “Prelude #2”), the album drifts toward an ending that feels like both a farewell and a thank-you to those who have followed the French group's fortunes (“Aria”): another precious chapter in that strain of underground pop which risks vanishing from our future listening.

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11/10/2026