Bobby Odyssey builds a world from fractured light with 'Delusions were all we had'
In the tangled quiet of Tāmaki Makaurau’s alt scene, Bobby Odyssey doesn’t make songs so much as she builds portals. Her debut album Delusions were all we had feels less like a linear record and more like a collage—torn, taped, and glowing faintly at the edges. The moniker of Rachael Brown, Bobby Odyssey channels memory, grief, and self-reconstruction into something beautifully janky. It hums with a kind of lived-in imperfection, a trance-inflected alt-pop world that flickers between sonic and visual forms, as if the music itself were a moving painting.
Every track feels like a confession half-swallowed, half-sung. On Urban Prophet, Brown maps her lineage through sound, tracing her relationship with ancestry and womanhood in tones that feel ritualistic and deeply human. Screecher lives in the shadow self, caught between surrender and survival. Attention stages an argument between ego and reason, while FWB captures the quiet ache of the seconds after a lover disappears through the door.
The album’s closing moments turn inward again. Airing Out releases long-held ghosts, offering forgiveness for the self and the people who shaped it. Then comes Chuno, a recording of her mother reading her palm—part memory, part magic, all heart.
Delusions were all we had isn’t a debut that seeks perfection. It invites the listener to sit inside distortion, to find beauty in what’s unresolved. Bobby Odyssey proves that vulnerability doesn’t need polish to shine. It only needs truth.
