On the last day of May 2017, Melody Prochet tweeted excitedly about her upcoming US tour:
She, her fans, and her family had no idea it would be her last tweet for almost a year.
Days later, she suffered an accident that left her with broken vertebrae and a brain aneurysm. The tour was cancelled and the release of the album she was touring was postponed.
The only communication with fans came from her family, who posted, via Prochet’s socials, that she would spend the coming months recovering. No details about the circumstances of the accident were given.
Okay, pause for a second: this was supposed to be the moment in the post where I would to write about the irony of the title of this song, taken from her 2012 debut: “Quand vas-tu rentrer” translates roughly to “when are you coming back” – a question her fans must have nervously asked themselves with each passing month of radio silence. Had her condition worsened? Had she recovered but quit music?
That was going to be my angle. But thankfully, I don’t have to take that angle anymore. Because just last week, while I was drafting this post, she tweeted this:
Just like that, she’s back.
So instead, my angle becomes the mirror image of last week’s post – the moments that change our lives aren’t always moments of victory, good luck, or glorious triumph. They can be ugly, painful, horrible. Based on hints she gave in her recent Pitchfork interview, it seems like the pain of the last year has led Prochet to a place of greater contentment.
Listening to this track and scrolling down her Twitter timeline, I find myself staring at the space between those two tweets. On my screen, it’s a matter of millimetres, but for Melody Prochet, it must seem like the gap between two worlds.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The opening 15 seconds sound like what would happen if a 4-year-old was experimenting with a cool vocal sample on a keyboard. Then, suddenly and magnificently, it sounds like what would happen if Dave Brubeck was experimenting with a cool vocal sample on a keyboard.
2. At 2:49, a wonderful jangly guitar comes in. Along with the 5/4 time, it reminds me of our featured song from week 173.
3. My French is pretty good, but the combination of a reverb-heavy mix, her tendency to mumble, and the nuances of another language’s imagery makes it hard for me to understand the lyrics. Which sounds like a bad thing, except that the result for me is that I float through the song picking out words and fragments of phrases here and there: From my room…fall asleep…broken… and then the beautifully clear, rising melody of the title lyric: When are you coming back? It’s like a sudden moment of clarity in an otherwise abstract dream.
Recommended listening activity:
Buying yourself a get-well card and a congratulations card at the same time.