French multi-instrumentalist Melody Prochet makes the kind of reliably atmospheric music that can turn even the most everyday moment into a scene from a Sofia Coppola or Xavier Dolan movie about doomed youth. Melody’s Echo Chamber glints like gossamer: cinematic dream-rock soundscapes, muted explosions of fuzzed-out bass, and coiled percussion wrapped in reverberant, jangling guitar.
Her sepia-toned shimmer gets even dreamier on Unclouded, Prochet’s fourth album—fifth, if we count the “lost” album Unfold (and we should). She plays to her strengths here, the music unfurling in diaphanous pop-rock psychedelia that threatens to float away. The album is a swatch of beautiful, shiny fabric hanging from a tree branch, dancing in the breeze—and in danger of being shredded into bits of glitter by a too-strong gust.
The pretty chords and arpeggios Prochet claimed to have tired of before writing the self-titled record that put her on the map dominate Unclouded. The downtempo march at the heart of “Memory’s Underground” explodes into a storm of strings and reverb. The El Michels Affair-assisted “Daisy” is bottled sunshine by way of plucked electric guitar and a repetitive drum line you can hear in almost every song on the record. Her singing voice has always been a wisp threading her more substantial arrangements together, and the same is true here. Prochet largely sings in English on Unclouded, which is fine, though the bilingual element always added an extra layer—her songs in French have a larger-than-life quality, sung with an authority that suggests Prochet as an heir-apparent to French electro-rock pioneers like Air. Much like their own cotton-candied music, Unclouded melts into itself, an ethereal tapestry that lacks definition. It’s beautiful, but not even the singles really stand out on their own.
The album takes its name from a Hayao Miyazaki quote about seeing the good and bad of life with clear eyes, “unclouded by hate.” The overarching theme of balance comes with undertones of both boundless optimism and karmic justice. “Life can see who you are/Life will take you where you belong,” she muses on “How to Leave Misery Behind”; it might be the album’s most byzantine song, after a string of tracks that go down smoothly without overthinking. On the title track, harp and strings resonate with all the force of wind chimes swinging gently in a temple garden. The mood reigns supreme: Unclouded earns its place in the canon of music for wistful teens to gaze longingly out the window onto the suburb they’re trying to escape.
Part of what put Prochet on the map was her artistic (and romantic) collaboration with fellow modern psych-rock heavyweight Kevin Parker. The Tame Impala frontman produced her excellent self-titled debut in his Perth home after Prochet, then releasing music as My Bee’s Garden, approached him after a show in Paris. He also worked on Unfold, which was originally intended as a full-length follow-up to the first Melody’s Echo Chamber record before Prochet and Parker’s breakup and the near-fatal accident that put her out of commission for several years.
You might think that broken hearts and bones would leave an artist more lost than found. Dream pop and psych rock are by definition vague, yet although Prochet amps up the oneiric here, her music has never sounded more like its essence, meant to dissolve into whatever ether it occupies. Unclouded may not push her in a new direction, but it’s marked by a newfound grit and a palpable confidence. Her dreamworld is as amorphous as ever, but within that blur, her songwriting is imbued with a new sense of clarity.
