Melody’s Echo Chamber’s Unclouded reviewed: sparkling magic from stylish chanteuse

It’s definitely this alchemist thing,” Melody Prochet tells Uncut, reflecting on what music does for her, and what it means to her, several decades into a life making art. “It’s transmutation, turning things that happen that are difficult and not cool into energy for the future. It puts things in another perspective, another world. Creativity is my goddess, actually.” With Unclouded, Prochet’s first album in over three years, those alchemical processes are ever-present, alongside something mysterious happening just out of earshot. Mystery within clarity – it’s an achievement, to know and yet to be silent.

It’s taken Prochet a while to get here. She first reached into the collective consciousness with the debut, self-titled Melody’s Echo Chamber album, released back in 2012, which she recorded with then-partner Kevin Parker of Tame Impala. But Prochet already had form, between her album as My Bee’s Garden and then her duo The Narcoleptic Dancers, with Anton Louis Jr. If the connection with Parker helped her achieve some visibility, the songs were clearly Prochet’s art; it was a lovely, endlessly listenable album, becalmed and adrift, as though she’d gathered loosely connected threads – the narcotic folk of Mazzy Star, the bliss-out of My Bloody Valentine, the playful poetry of Françoise Hardy – and woven together a new, stylishly seductive cloak of colours.

Two more, excellent albums followed – 2018’s Bon Voyage and 2022’s Emotional Eternal, both recorded with members of Swedish psych-pop group Dungen, as Prochet had relocated to Bagarmossen, Sweden. But her personal life took several twists and turns over these years, with a 2017 accident leading to months in hospital for a brain aneurysm and broken vertebrae. Speaking with Prochet, it’s clear these intervening years have been troubled ones, but also times of personal development and clarification; times of transmutation.

The debut Melody’s Echo Chamber album was also reissued in 2022, with an accompanying mini album, Unfold, that documented the outcome of abandoned second album sessions that took place in 2013. There was something full circle about the rediscovery of these tracks, as though Prochet was closing off one phase of her career, and entering a welcome uncertainty. That she’s returned three years later with what might well be her strongest album since that debut is no real surprise; Prochet’s art tends to blossom in states of transition and uncertainty.

Part of the pleasure of Unclouded is the way Prochet brings her distinctive sonic thumbprint into dialogue with new aesthetics. There are two keys to why this album sounds so renewed: firstly, Prochet’s collaboration with Swedish producer Sven Wunder (aka Joel Danell); secondly, her engagement with and embrace of modern hip-hop and R&B production. It’s a seductive blend that works well for the kinds of hazy, miniaturised pop songs that are now core to Prochet’s songwriting.

There’s plenty of crossover between those two spaces, of course. The connection with Danell makes perfect sense, whether you’ve been steeping in his recent run of excellent library-jazz albums as Sven Wunder, or his earlier, equally gorgeous albums as Musette, where his fogged, drunken-eyed folk/soundtrack constructions slotted alongside acts like Directorsound and Broadcast. Danell’s long been part of a history of Swedish underground music that invests pop with filmic magic (see also the music he’s supported, and the artists he’s worked with over the years, like Matti Bye, Dina Ögon or Andreas Tengblad).

Some of that magic has made its way onto Unclouded, obviously, though warped through Prochet’s vision. The material here was predominantly co-written and co-produced by her and Danell, and his unassuming but distinct touch integrates beautifully with Prochet’s hyper-acute drift-song. It’s there in the lovely, swimming strings that meander gorgeously through “How To Leave Misery Behind”, the strange, MBV-esque blur that swoons around “Memory’s Underground” and its curious reminders of ’60s girl pop, the curlicues of flute and percussion that mosey across “Burning Man”.

The grooves throughout Unclouded are stunning, too – you can hear that Prochet and Danell have been attentive to just how important drums are to keeping things concise and in the pocket, even if your songs tend toward the indistinct and blurry. That seesaw is navigated beautifully by Malcolm Catto, whose playing is a highlight through the album – accented, full of passing details that give the rhythms an almost orchestral feel at times. You can hear the breathing space he’s learned to place between every strike of the snare; as a co-founder of The Heliocentrics, and having also collaborated with the likes of Mulatu Astatke and Lloyd Miller, he brings a sashaying sway to the songs, equal parts the laidback swing of soul-jazz, the energy rush of great pop and the unrelenting thud of hip-hop.

Indeed, you can hear Prochet’s love of modern hip-hop dotted across the album, in both the sturdiness of the beats and the deliquescence of the production. “I’m really happy to have explored that hip-hop connection,” she marvels, “because somehow it was there. I have lots of connections with hip-hop artists from Los Angeles and New York; they always connect with me and say, ‘I love your music,’ and I’m like, that’s so strange, and also so exciting.” Unclouded is so curious partly because it slips between worlds so effortlessly. There’s a memory of the vagueness of shoegaze, but also the hyper-clarity of modern R&B, the ‘nostalgia for times unknown’ of library music, and the wooziness and exultant energy of psychedelia and ’70s jazz, somehow percolating in there.

“I get it,” Prochet continues, “because the roots are the same and it’s universal. To travel from hip-hop to krautrock to shoegaze to spiritual jazz.” If there’s anything here that documents that interface so clearly, it’s “Daisy”, the closing pop gem, which was produced by Leon Michels of El Michels Affair, whose history also takes in membership of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and Lee Fields & The Expressions, and production for the likes of Clairo and Kali Uchis. Michels and Paul Castelluzo, both of El Michels Affair, also perform all the instruments on the song.

Coming at the very end of the album, it’s a bright flash of light, a spiralling spindle of kaleidoscopic guitars that tangle and twitch through the song, while Prochet’s voice finds, perhaps, its most comfortable setting here, her breathy, glazed delivery – clearly considered, but somehow not an affectation – swimming over the guitars and keys, punctuated by rolling, sputtering drum fills. It’s a languorous, delightful encounter between two worlds, a space of collaboration and exploration. And its sudden end is the perfect cut-off for an album that makes its points quickly and effortlessly, no need for unnecessary extrapolation: just the essence of the song.

In lesser hands, the 12 short, jewel-like songs on Unclouded could have felt slight, undercooked, not quite there. But there’s a beautiful simpatico between Prochet and Danell throughout, that elevates everything, and the El Michels Affair contribution points outwards, to new experiences. It’s a lovely album – 30 minutes well spent.

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