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Photo: Klaudia Poloncova 

Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, does not have a true city center; time has made it so medieval facades both clash and harmonize with brutalist slabs, where all places matter, and don’t. From this juxtaposition hails TIMEA, an indie pop and neo-soul singer-songwriter who has Europe buzzing and makes a highly anticipated debut with her new album, and I forever will.

The record is a topography of a landscape traveled across, truly, a single year, but one whose experiences last a lifetime and have helped shape an artist, the songs she offers, and the language they carry. A deeply personal recollection, and I forever will immerses listeners in sounds that feel nostalgic and hopeful, aiming to crumble borders and build roads to better places, to give meaning to locations and people.

“Videocalls” opens the record, with pink-hazy harmonics and glitzy electric guitar strums ushering in the mist-lit vocals of TIMEA, who immediately opens up and sings about connecting with others across distance. As the bass settles in and the dreamscape takes shape, a close of the eyes may reveal cosmic hands stretched out to feel for someone, as if traveling through a phone, dial-up style.

Tapping into neo-soul influences, TIMEA opens up the next track, “sick of playing pretend,” a '50s lounge feel accentuated by honeyed piano chords that drip thick and a voice compressed as if passing through an old intercom. The song picks up sonically and emotionally, with a snappy drumbeat and lyrics that yearn for connection, “Can we be friends? Because I am sick of playing pretend,” repeats with growing emotion.

As droning tones hover about, we enter “záleží,” perhaps the most emotionally charged track on the album. The song, sung in TIMEA’s native Slovak, is full of regrets, what-ifs, and the aching thought that remembering how to fix things might somehow make them whole again. Because it matters. Because it still hurts. Look up a translation of the lyrics when you can, and you will find a poem that buries itself in your heart.

In the haze that clears from that powerful composition, we see the bridges being built, lit softly, inviting us to walk them. Bratislava, all of a sudden, does not feel too far from New York. Not too distinct, maybe, from your home. Language begins to dissolve, and music takes over as the form of communication in tracks like the acoustic-driven “waiting for magic” and “NOVÉ TELO.”

Music becomes the instrument that faithfully heals a turbulent year, one TIMEA describes as the hardest of her life—a year that saw her lose her father and her sense of home, as she moved between Bratislava and New York and everything in between. Today, she finds herself on the path of stardom, and I forever will becomes the sonic map that charts that voyage, one that surveys, measures, and gives shape to each loss, each monument.

As songs like “jazzmaster,” with its gulpy bassline, and “ALL KINDS OF STUFF,” with its ballerina-like piano steps, move toward the album’s end, a sense of distance still remains. Like Bratislava, the center is lost in time, between the old and the new. That may inspire short bouts of emotion, as in the album’s interlude. Or it may inspire a quiet acceptance—that all things are forever moving, and that home is in their existence.

Listen to and I forever will below: