It glisters with the lustrous sheen of a since glorified '60s as Prochet's lucid, if largely unintelligible vocals splish-splosh in plashes of gloriously muddy guitar. It's the sound of a classically trained protégé projecting a belated rebellion that's less hell-raising and rather more heaven scent, and in its scruffiness dwells seduction. It's a swirling, disorientating state of dishevelment that Melody's Echo Chamber engenders; one that comes embellished in no small part by the giddy chimes of mellifluousness Tame Impala's Kevin Parker channels.
I ought confess to a distaste bordering on the disdainful as far as the Antipodean dream-pop architects are concerned. There's an in no way ambiguous logic to the crumbling of Goldwasser and VanWyngarden's expeditiously constructed neo-psychedelia renaissance, and Tame Impala have always seemed, subjectively, to typify the groggy comedown off all that hallucinogenic folly of '08. Here, however, Parker's work in producing and phasing the damn fuck out of the LP establishes the man as a pretty much peerless cadet, if and when costumed in a rather less flashy spacesuit.
For despite the celestial vocal capacities of Prochet, hers is oft a distinctly earthly charm. Bisuou Maguique, for instance, a gloopy translation of magic kiss overloaded with vowel is a suitably globular blob of listen that recalls bits of Black Dice's Mr. Impossible, compatriot Charlotte Gainsbourg's more contemporary musical outpour, and their storied chanson française heritage all at once. The slinky glimmer of You Won't Be Missing That Part Of Me is vraiment française aussi in feel, as Prochet's unmistakably Francophonic intonations ride an undulating insouciance of loose snares, synth wibbles, and such cosmic stuffs as Congratulations was made on.
She epitomises the attractive and inherently endearing advantageousness of bilingualism, and as she flickers from adopted English to native French so too she thumbs through the annals and Bedroom Databanks of Bradford Cox' Atlas Sound endeavours. Or the more coherent moments of, at least. Were Lizzi Bougatsos stupefied by Logos and left to wallow 'til prune-like in its pools of astoundingly high fidelity lusciousness, she'd maybe bliss out as does Prochet on an almost uproarious Endless Shore, or the compulsive cleanse of Some Time Alone, Alone with which we return to the inescapable comparison with Cox. Yet whereas Parallax' most eminent moment came when the Deerhunter came to dabble en español, Prochet is at her most convincing when sighing the sweetest of dulcet nothings in her acquired, and faintly Americanized English. That which follows on from I Follow You, Crystallized, goes unbettered across these eleven: like an ever so slightly more terrestrial take on SVIIB's exultant stargaze, distorted drum machines clatter as though a discordant ensemble of recalcitrant pacemakers pattering to arrest; a pulsating guitar line seemingly inspired by Benjamin Curtis' admirable lifework surfs atop such rudimentary rhythms with poise; and a glitch-fuelled bass romp in its breakdown stages brings the overriding sense of invigoration to a stuttering halt.
Musically, it embodies the ethereality to dictate the album's central movements and moods although lyrically, it exhibits a raw passion; yearning, even. Something that, ultimately, is obfuscated for much of it. "Just before I crystallize/ You are gone for real this time", Prochet soughs as though a spurned siren perched atop some decomposing plank of mooring deep within Calais hinterland thus although still airy and extrahuman, it pertains to a palpably human emotion; the like only fabricated where there's an athrob heart palpitating within.
The clarity of the LP dissolves somewhat in its latter stages, as the turbid mantra to Snowcapped Andes Crash and the quaggy Mount Hopeless (envisage Indra Dunis doing a more lethargic Little Dragon number) induce an in no way unpleasant state of inertia.
In a halcyon ambience however, every year would end this way – in pacific, if inebriated repose. Prochet has had her jouissance earlier on in the album, although with this one I'd presuppose she'll be provoking plenty more joie de vivre once it's been released from her resonant 'Echo Chamber.
