Love is in the air and Oracle Sisters’ “Divinations” are in our ears

On February 14th, the Paris-based indie trio, Oracle Sisters are releasing their sophomore record Divinations.

The band is made up of Julia Johansen, Chris Willatt, and Lewis Lazar. The music and lyrics for the album were collected in fits and bursts as the band toured the world following the release of their lauded debut LP, Hydranism. Each member of the band originates from a different country in Europe and comes with their own hue of wanderlust that colours their rich musical tapestry in unique and complementary ways.

This is a band that builds its music up on a foundation of two adamantine materials. The first layer is the rhythm. The band creates a bedrock with which the rest of the song will stand. A bedrock built from drums, bass, and guitar. A bedrock poured and mixed of these instruments and so thoroughly combined to create a swing and a groove that settles beneath the rest of the song to create an infallible floor. Tiled over this base layer are lyrics laid down in squares of Danish Greens and browns and reds, Swedish rosemalings, Celtic knot designs, and French hand-painted patterns. Their music is a celebration of aesthetic and their lyrics only serve to uplift that goal. Image and emotion come line after line, free associating over topics like love, wealth, art, meaning, and society. Their style is captured, as if in a polaroid, perfectly on their 3rd single from the album, “Blue Left Hand,” which was accompanied by a music video of surreal moving paintings directed by Jim Longden. In the song, Christopher Willatt sings:

“I got my money/I got my place/I got my car/I got my dish of youthful delinquency/I got my friends/I got my state/I got my colours/Locked behind the gates/It’s in the news/It’s in your face/It’s in the rattle of the midnight rave/Where every car/And every plane/Are going home/Someplace they think is safe.”

While every listener can take the pronounal obscurity of these lyrics and prescribe identity to what is “in the news” and in “the rattles of the midnight raves” the emotion and the cadence of the track cannot be translated or defined in any other way. This is how The Oracles provide their prophecies to you; standing in the cabaret they have built for you, on a bedrock of rhythm and tiled with ornate lines of poetry. This is where they shower you with sparks from their keyboards and extra guitars and let the songs come together fully.

The album is incredibly strong from start to finish. The songwriting and musicianship are the standouts in an album with this much consistency. The musical styles and themes stay constant throughout the record without leaving any holes or outliers on the tracklist. The music envisions warm psychedelic summer days without losing structure and breaking apart into ambient music as can be the pitfall with more challenging song structures. The band is going on tour in Europe this spring and will hopefully for this album reviewer announcing a US leg soon.

Oracle Sisters Live Dates 2025

Get tickets on tix.to/oraclesisterstour

3/8 – Le 106 – Rouen, FR
3/13 – L’Épicerie Moderne – Lyon, FR
3/14– Le Rockstore – Montpellier, FR
3/15 – El Pumarejo – Barcelona, ES
3/18 – Ubu – Rennes, FR
3/19 – La Cigale – Paris, FR
3/21– La Vapeur – Dijon, FR
3/22 – Rocher de Palmer – Bordeaux, FR
3/24 – Sala Copérnico – Madrid, ES
3/25 – M.Ou.Co – Porto, PT
3/26 – Riquela – Santiago, ES
3/27– Bilborock – Bilbao, ES
3/28– Le Metronum – Toulouse, FR
4/1 – XOYO – Birmingham, UK
4/2 – KOKO – London, UK
4/3 – Band on the Wall – Manchester, UK
4/4 – Hangar34 – Liverpool, UK
4/5 – G2 – Glasgow, UK
4/6– Button Factory – Dublin, IE
4/8 – Thekla – Bristol, UK
4/10 – L’Aéronef – Lille, FR
4/11 – Doornroosje – Nijmegen, NL
4/12 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, NL
4/13 – Botanique/Grand Salon – Brussels, BE
4/14 – Columbia Theater – Berlin, DE
7/25 – Tramlines Festival – Sheffield, UK

Cover image by Ella Hermë, courtesy of the artist</span