Melody's Echo Chamber - Bon Voyage
Critic Score
Based on 25 reviews
2018 Ratings: #305 / 890
User Score
Based on 411 ratings
2018 Rank: #272
Liked by 31 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
God Is in the TV
She glides through an amalgamation of rich and varied influences and sounds, taking the listener on a personal and exhilarating journey. She’s allowed herself to follow every impulse, creating tension and beauty often within the same song. It’s challenging, at times surreal, and most importantly, it’s absolutely perfect.
90
AllMusic

She's made giant leaps as a singer, songwriter, and musical director, and Bon Voyage shows that Melody's Echo Chamber is far from being just a Kevin Parker creation. Prochet's vision is her own, and it's strong enough here to fly free of any and all constraints.

90
Northern Transmissions
With all the strange places this album goes on top of what you would want out of her writing, this is Prochet at her most ambitious but strong, so here’s hoping to her good health and less of a wait for her next release.
90
Uncut

Lasting just 37 minutes, Bon Voyage begs to be put on again, each listen revealing more of the myriad ideas that make up its weird majesty.

83
A.V. Club

On her sophomore album as Melody’s Echo Chamber, the aptly titled Bon Voyage, Melody Prochet pushes her warped psych pop to wholly new lands.

80
Drowned in Sound

Bon Voyage is a foray into the world of spiritual healing and rediscovery through a various musical textures and emotions.

80
FLOOD Magazine

Bon Voyage is a more comfortable and confident approach to her art than she’s ever exhibited before—and it’s a trip.

80
Clash
It is an album that demands repeat listens, but this is fine, as with each listen we learn a little more of its secrets, but once they have been cracked ‘Bon Voyage’ becomes something greater than its parts.
80
Loud and Quiet

Nearly five-and-a-half years after Prochet first charmed us all her with delightfully hazy psych-pop classics, she’s delivered another enchanting record stuffed with oddities, sweeping drama and immersive textures.

80
DIY
Melody’s weird medley may not be as accessible as her debut, but it’s a work of art that deserves to be beheld for its impressive and unique innovation.
80
Under the Radar

Bon Voyage really highlights the musical vocabulary of Prochet, and as such, the record achieves a great deal in very little time.

77
GIGsoup
On ‘Bon Voyage’, Melody’s Echo Chamber sets sail for a strange world that bridges the gap between past and future and brings together different languages and sounds, resulting in her most adventurous, psychedelic, and experimental release.
71
Pitchfork

Bon Voyage is overflowing with ideas, and their splattered presentation ultimately brings to mind Robert Frost’s saying about free-verse poetry: It’s like playing tennis without a net.

70
The 405

Paradoxically coherent and heterogeneous at the same time, Bon Voyage's richness resides exactly in its ability of awakening both the sweet and the sour in each and every one of us, confirming the omnipresence of a lining of sadness that envelops the generality of human perception.

70
The Needle Drop
Melody Prochet has bounced back with some of the freshest ideas coming out of neo-psych right now.
65
The Line of Best Fit

Albeit often abrasive, confounding and intentionally inconsistent in a way that spurns the breezy lustre of its predecessor, Bon Voyage is an honest coup d’œil into the psyche and the many stories it has to tell.

65
Spectrum Culture

The disorganized side of Bon Voyage proves how adaptive Melody’s Echo Chamber as a project can be when push comes to shove.

60
The Guardian

There are recurring themes ... but no trope as pervasive as the record’s proclivity for impromptu left turns. On the one hand, this means dull moments are few and far between. Yet an album that flits wantonly back and forth between languages and decades needs a strong personality to anchor it – and that’s one thing Bon Voyage’s restless experimentalism never quite gets round to establishing.

60
The Independent
With “Bon Voyage,” it genuinely feels as if Prochet got lost in her sounds and let it lead her.
60
Dork
A wait well worth it, ‘Bon Voyage’ builds upon the creative chaos of Melody’s Echo Chamber’s 2012 debut, like a mystical monster with an unforgiving bite.
60
NME

‘Boy Voyage’ lacks a running thread, centrepiece or concept to build itself around. It’s a wild, space-age trip that could do with a return ticket back to Earth.

40
The Skinny

Bon Voyage is not an easy listen by any count, and it probably isn’t meant to be. A collaborative record between Prochet, Dungen’s Reine Fiske and The Amazing’s Fredrik Swahn, Prochet deals with a lot of dark themes lyrically, covering loneliness, feelings of lack of self-worth and general discontentment with life. However, it really feels like an album of two very distant halves.

JacksonLerner
93

this is: Melody Prochet.

it’s mysterious how Melody is so effective at her craft; she can transition between genres so quickly and seamlessly that one may need to listen on repeat.

throughout ‘bon voyage’, there’s lots of pockets and “places to hide”. i lose track of time because every few seconds there are so many complexities.

album opener, “cross my heart”, is a dreamy blend of french and english. there are multiple flute solos, eclectic ... read more

Quet
84

Bon Voyage is idea-heavy and as strange as can be.

Best part of the album: Each track changes things up stylistically
Worst part of the album: I wish a few more ideas developed through the record's runtime

Plats
80

The songwriting's bonkers, the production is SO rich and detailed, and it's very progressive stuff! I like it a lot!

Fav Tracks: Visions Of Someone Special, On A Wall Of Reflections; Quand Les Larmes D'un Ange Font Danser; Cross My Heart; Shirim; Breathe In, Breathe Out

Least Fav Track: Var Har Du Vart?

Score:
8
Great

79

Melody provides some of her most impactful songs to date, with some great moments throughout. Despite being a relatively short record, there still manages to be so many different sounds and ideas that are experimented with and for the most part the risks taken here pay off. This is shown right from the first track, as "Cross My Heart" feels like multiple songs in one. I wouldn't be able to review this without mentioning "Shirim", which is just produced so magnificently and ... read more

Kanye
76

Var Har Du Vart?

MaineGameBoy
80

Some pretty and nice Neo-Psychedelia. Thanks alicore for the reccomendation!

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Added on: April 4, 2017