OFF THE BEATEN TRACK, the debut album of the singer, cellist and songwriter MARA, is a kidnapping on unknown territory. With her classical roots, she gives pop songs an individual timbre and you also tend to hear influences from jazz. In addition to adaptations by Garbage, The Cure or Yaël Naïm, it is above all the songs by her own pen that, in their melancholic, dreamy manner, can both radiate inner peace but also rebel.

In "Du" (German: "You") she describes the magnetism between two people, the dangerous game between letting go and not being able to do so, while "Fly" envelops her in a cocoon full of spherical sounds. The composition "Land of Thee" begins with a fragile and almost spiritual introduction, while pulling out all the stops in the middle section and making the cello howl electrically distorted. A bath of emotions that makes you rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

The artist confidently delivers a all-round harmonious album, breaks boundaries and is open to new things, and thus lives up to the motto printed on the inside of the digipack: Play as you are.