Melody's Echo Chamber Emotional Eternal

The bright, kaleidoscopic vignettes that defined Melody’s Echo Chamber’s first decade have softened into misty pastel watercolours on the French singer/songwriter Mélody Prochet’s third album, Emotional Eternal. Following 2018’s Bon Voyage—a dense, disorienting psych-pop set whose release was overshadowed by an accident that left Prochet hospitalized for several months—the artist moved from Paris to the Alps, became a mother and fused all those experiences into a lighter, more lithe album that seeks peace somewhere between reverie and reality. Slipping between English and French, Prochet is a bewitching pied piper, her breathy incantations guiding a playful procession of sitar (“Pyramids in the Clouds”), horns (“A Slow Dawning of Peace”) and strings (“Personal Message”) through weightless, winding melodies that are held down by a persistent, propulsive bass. It all leads to “Alma_the Voyage”, a swooning, swirling orchestral ode to the artist’s daughter that balances all the headiness with pure heart as Prochet gushes, “I’m so lucky to have you, and so proud to hold you.”