Melody's Echo Chamber – 'Emotional Eternal' review: on the right track

Melody Prochet has found her peace, it seems. 2018’s ‘Bon Voyage’, the last album from the French psych artist otherwise known as Melody’s Echo Chamber, was a document of a person lost and hurting. That was four years ago and, since writing it, Prochet has recovered from a serious accident that left her with a brain aneurysm and broken vertebrae, relocated to the Alps and given birth to a daughter. On the other side of that comes ‘Emotional Eternal’, an album on which she faces life’s rocky path with a newfound clarity.

You can hear that in the first 20 seconds of the opening title track. A wiggling, joyful bassline snakes its way past acoustic jangles, sounding like the friend who encourages you to put your worries down and dance. The album was produced by Reine Fiske and Fredrik Swahn, the same team that worked on ‘Bon Voyage’; but while that album was sonically dense and uneasy, this one is airy and untethered; a rainbow in mist. Prochet’s vocals exude a satisfying, calming sense of gliding and her melodies are strangely life-affirming, as if conveying a peace deeper than just the words they deliver.

Perhaps there’s a glimpse of her perspective as a new parent in the fact that these lyrics, which slip fluidly between English and French, are often presented as gentle advice, as opposed to the more diaristic skew of her earlier songs. “If it suddenly feels that low / Don’t be scared, I was there before / I promise you’re going to find other reasons to dance along”, she sings on ‘Personal Message’, while on ‘A Slow Dawning of Peace’, she vows: “There’s still something to live for; love is all around.” Meanwhile, her French lyrics are more dreamlike – take the image at the centre of ‘Pyramids in the Clouds’.

Her compositions are grand and celebratory, whether it’s the orchestral, triumphant sound of ‘Personal Message’, the sitar-tinged stoner rock of ‘Pyramids in the Clouds’ or the synth-y stomp of ‘Looking Backward’. They’re united by a commitment to groove, bass always high in the mix and leading the way. On the almost seven-minute closing track, ‘Alma_The Voyage’ (released as a single in truncated form), piano, flute and strings construct a majestic, blissful love song for Prochet’s daughter. Like this emotional album as whole, it’s an ode to whatever puts your life back on the right track.