Goodness

From her earliest EP, feeo (Theodora Laird) established herself as a paradox: a 22-year-old singer with the emotional gravity of someone far older, pairing plaintive, world-weary lyrics with an uncanny composure. Her early work’s downtempo beats and sighing synths framed a voice that could bloom from hushed confession into unexpectedly agile, R&B-informed flourishes—revealing a quiet self-assurance beneath the doubt.

Over the past four years, feeo has expanded this aesthetic through EPs, singles, and collaborations with artists like Caius Williams and Loraine James. Her production grew stranger and more granular, filled with dusty textures, ghostly vocal samples, and a sense of emotional rooms sealed off and left to settle. Her music increasingly resembled a private, fragile world built out of sighs, static, and whispered questions.

With her debut album Goodness, released on London experimental imprint AD 93, feeo leans fully into minimalism and abstraction. Her sonic palette is barer and more alien, even as her lyrics expand into broader, mythic themes. The album opens with a misdirect: “Days pt. 1” features no singing from feeo at all, instead offering a spoken-word monologue by her father, actor Trevor Laird, who describes surreal disasters—pianos falling onto infinite strangers—over scorched, industrial feedback. The effect is disorienting and cosmic, suggesting a plunge into void-like territory.

Yet Goodness is not a noise record. Rather, the starkness around feeo’s voice intensifies its emotional impact. Tracks like “Requiem” and “Win!” showcase her multi-tracked vocals drifting like mist over minimal synths, horns, and electrical crackles, transforming fragility into beauty. Her songwriting moves beyond intimate heartbreak toward more expansive, mythopoetic imagery: “The Mountain” invokes a whale of apocalyptic scale; “Requiem” envisions death, rebirth, and black roses growing from her body.

By stripping away prettiness and conventional structures, feeo reaches a new level of expressive power. Goodness presents her as a more experimental, more self-assured, and even more world-weary artist—one whose quietness now feels like a deliberate, resonant force.