Melody's Echo Chamber - Unclouded

When Melody Prochet went about assembling the team to make the fourth Melody's Echo Chamber album, she turned from one group of Swedish musicians to another. Dispensing with many of the crew who helped make both 2018's Bon Voyage and 2022's Emotional Eternal incredibly successful mash-ups of dream pop and psychedelia, she collaborates here with producer Sven Wunder on 2025's Unclouded.  Here, there is a more cohesive, concentrated approach to the playing, arranging, and production, especially when paired with another batch of songs that gently probe the melancholy and magic of modern life. "In the Stars" is a radiant midtempo track that pairs a majestic string section and Prochet's double-tracked vocal harmonies with drummer Malcom Catto's loose fills and whomping backbeat, "Memory's Underground" switches from underwater girl group balladry to blown-out psych rave-up before swirling into a symphonic climax, and "Eyes Closed" is a '70s cop show theme juxtaposed with weightless psych-folk melodies and murky guitar freak-outs. These are just a few examples of how this crew twist, meld, and reinvent the Melody's Echo Chamber sound; the effort pays off with a record that is just as impressively crafted as anything Prochet has done. That is high praise indeed, considering she's made some of the most inventive and pleasing neo-psychedelic-adjacent albums of the previous decade or so.  ~Tim Sendra, allmusic.com