Album Review: Melody's Echo Chamber - Melody’s Echo Chamber

Melody's Echo Chamber is Parisian musician Melody Prochet's trippy dream-pop solo project. The classically trained vocalist and multi-instrumentalist used to be the lead singer of French indie pop band My Bee's Garden, but then the little bee met an impala and everything changed…

Melody's Echo Chamber materialised in June 2012 in the form of Crystallized, a lone, mysterious single, with a delicate balance of fuzz and fluff, sonic and sweet and a sound not unlike the UK's Broadcast. Along with album opener I Follow You, it is clear why these two catchy tracks were chosen to lead Prochet's collection of psychedelic dream pop.

The rhythms on Melody's Echo Chamber split time between rock and jazz but instead of mimicking a genre, Melody's Echo Chamber plugs into its very own. The classic elements are there, but they're muddier, moodier and clouded in distortion. Some Time Alone, Alone follows the album's basic formula: The instruments whip up a hazy atmosphere inside which Prochet's delicate coo floats. Singing in French for the first time on some songs, there are moments when you can easily lose track of which language Prochet is singing until a word or two peeks out from the reverb. The most interesting track is Mount Hopeless, which swaps the band's trademark fuzzed guitars for Air-like grooves creating a really entrancing, spacey vibe. I slipped away for a second.

While there is no doubt that this stylistically assured debut is an excellent album, one can't help but feel like it sounds familiar. And it does because it was produced by Tame Impala frontman and brainchild Kevin Parker. Prochet and Parker have together created a lovely record, even if it sometimes struggles to rise above just an echo of something 'Tamer'.