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.
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.
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.
Bon Voyage is a foray into the world of spiritual healing and rediscovery through a various musical textures and emotions.
Bon Voyage is a more comfortable and confident approach to her art than she’s ever exhibited before—and it’s a trip.
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.
Bon Voyage really highlights the musical vocabulary of Prochet, and as such, the record achieves a great deal in very little time.
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.
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.
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.
The disorganized side of Bon Voyage proves how adaptive Melody’s Echo Chamber as a project can be when push comes to shove.
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.
‘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.
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.
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
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
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
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
1 | Cross My Heart 6:55 | 83 |
2 | Breathe in, Breathe Out 2:50 | 82 |
3 | Desert Horse 5:14 | 74 |
4 | Var Har Du Vart? 1:28 | 67 |
5 | Quand Les Larmes D'un Ange Font Danser La Neige 7:07 | 79 |
6 | Visions of Someone Special, On a Wall of Reflections 4:55 | 71 |
7 | Shirim 4:46 | 93 |
#5 | / | God Is In The TV |
#28 | / | Drift |
#42 | / | Uncut |
#90 | / | Under the Radar |
/ | AllMusic |