On Unclouded, Melody Prochet doesn’t so much return as re-materialize: the same gauzy psych-pop silhouette as ever, but with its edges newly lacquered by an expanded ensemble and co-producer Sven Wunder’s taste for plush, cinematic detail. The opener, “The House That Doesn’t Exist,” is a mission statement in the softest ink—jangle and strings braided into a lullaby, Prochet’s helium harmonies stacked until they feel less sung than suspended. It’s gorgeous in the way a perfume is gorgeous: hard to hold, easy to drift inside.
That devotion to atmosphere is the album’s great strength and its nagging limitation. Across 12 quick cuts, Prochet keeps returning to a familiar spell—underwater vocals, pastel chord changes, drums that shuffle rather than strike—so that individual songs can blur like scenes from the same half-remembered dream. “In the Stars” rides a breezier, jazz-tinged sway; “Broken Roses” exhales in warm slow motion. “Flowers Turn Into Gold” is a flash of bilingual shimmer, and “Childhood Dream” leans into nostalgia without turning it into sentimentality, its sunlit recollection carried more by tone than by decipherable narrative.
When Unclouded breaks its own haze, though, it’s thrilling. “Eyes Closed” introduces a firmer spine—motorik insistence with a Neu!-like forward pull, then a crunch of Dungen-esque psych riffing that finally puts grit under the gloss. “Memory’s Underground” goes further, spiraling into a denser, almost cinematic freakout, as if the record briefly remembers it can bite. Even “Into Shadows,” one of the livelier moments, benefits from the album’s secret weapon: drumming that keeps nudging the music toward motion, adding little syncopated pivots where the guitars and keys might otherwise keep watercoloring the same sky.
The title track, a short instrumental palate-cleanser, feels like Prochet’s thesis rendered as texture—presence, impermanence, the idea of seeing with “eyes unclouded by hate” translated into sound that doesn’t demand interpretation so much as attention. And closer “Daisy” adds a crisp pop glint, a reminder that all this mist is still meticulously arranged. Unclouded won’t convert anyone who needs big contrasts or obvious hooks; it’s too committed to its own equilibrium for that. But taken on its own terms—nighttime, headphones, a willingness to be slowly bewitched—it’s an impressively controlled trip: less a rollercoaster than a ribbon of smoke, curling with purpose.
