While her previous work struck the listener with its high energy, it seems that with age and experience, Melody Prochet doesn’t feel the need to impress or surprise with her delivery as much. The songs are still filled with wonderful bass, strings and her indelibly sweet vocals; arrangements that are as full as anything you hear in modern music. I found myself, in listening to the album, however, torn between comparison with her old work and being carried away in the different direction that she has taken.

“Constellation of love / I know that dream / It can’t be real / Where do you come from?” she sings on the reflective “Looking Backward.” And the same could be said of Prochet, who is at once out of her time, like a ghost, and very very present. That is the feel, as an American, listening to the album: the feel of something foreign and familiar at the same time. Thank goodness for Google Translate, which gives her evocative poetry meaning, though there is not much that can compare to the French language in beauty and romance.

In all French, on the funky, lead-guitar-heavy third track, “Pyramids in the Clouds,” she sings, “All these years / That I lost / Quilted in black ink / Wildflowers from the Lost Islands / I love these lives / That I have traveled.” She translates her epic experiences in great form, though the lyrics can at times be repetitive and less poetic than at other times.

Overall, there is a surprising “classic rock” feel to the album, though couched in baroque pop, as if she and her “Bermuda Triangle” had been listening to the prog, jam bands of the 70’s on repeat. It’s at once satisfying and disillusioning. Perhaps the best way to describe this album, which hits on the highs and lows of life: satisfying and disillusioning. There are few people making music like Melody’s Echo Chamber out there right now, and I can see these songs finding a real home and being life-helpers to her loyal listeners, as they assuredly have been to her.

Pre-order Emotional Eternal by Melody’s Echo Chamber HERE