Melody Chamber, The

***The self-titled debut album by The Melody Chamber is steeped in new romantic post-punk and southern gothic jangle-pop, feeling like watching an old VHS tape of 120 Minutes where it’s just a forgotten cult classic next to another until the tape gives out.

Upon repeat listens the album starts to feel like it has two themes of both space and time running through the album. Space is in almost every song on the album from the moon, the sun, the planets, and the stars showing how large the universe is and how small our own reflection of time and how little time we really have in the grand scheme of things. Space is so expansive and there is an underlying despair in the album because the sad truth is that time and life is linear. Wallace Dietz, who writes the lyrics, swears he doesn’t journal or pre-write the lyrics, but he just plays the melody and lets words flow as he goes along. Subjects are usually nameless and shrouded in mystery allowing the listener to build a bit of their own world within the album, and the stories come from parts of Wallace’s own life, but only loosely. A phrase or a single word can set him in the direction of what flows forth which is a very stream of conscious style writing.