Meelodi: CHAHÁR (Album Review)

Their hot streak with CHAHÁR. A five-track album that feels much grander than its length.

Meelodi is a group that strives to be different, presenting the listener with sounds from every corner of the world and blending them together exquisitely. This is thanks to the diversity of the group, a factor which it prides itself on, the benefits of having such a variety of sounds and cultures are a huge part of what makes CHAHÁR a great first listen.

Track one, “Goftem” paints the album’s picture perfectly and sets a brooding, atmospheric tone that overcomes any language barriers an English speaker like me may have. Despite not knowing the content of the lyrics, the swaying melodies of the vocals still tell a story in such a way that context isn’t necessarily needed.

And this goes for all the songs, every vocal performance is brilliantly done without any error. All the group’s singers follow an aura of mystique and subtlety that resonates with the album’s elusive ambience.

Track three, Mishwar is a major highlight of the album for me and has the vocal performance that stands out the most. Nawar’s soft emotive singing molds itself into the equally soft strings of the guitar and makes for an amazing first listening experience. The male singer of the track contrasts the softness of Nawar’s voice with a more powerful, sometimes coarse, voice that deepens the creative qualities of the song.

The penultimate track, Desert Eyes, is the most up-tempo song out of the five and is where the instrumentalists of the group truly take the lead. The drums give both a tribal and energetic quality to the track and almost whisk you away to a foreign country.

Alquitaf, the final track is epic in both length and scale. The song features only instrumentation for the majority of its seven-minute runtime until all the sounds of the album come crashing together towards the end in a spectacular way. Alquitaf feels like a slow walk into the desert or the first step into an unknown world, it’s moody and elegantly performed by the group.

The album finishes in a satisfying way and ends just as mysteriously as it starts. Meelodi has said that they used poems from a variety of different people for the lyrical content, and whilst for me the words might not be understood, the emotion is felt. The instrumentation of the group does not miss a beat and goes spectacularly smoothly with no faults.

SCORE/Outstanding: the album is visceral, surreal, and elegantly performed by all of the group. The singing narrates the poems in a wonderful form of expression that invokes emotion without even having to know the language in which It is being sung. An outstanding album from Meelodi!

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[We rank albums on a scale of: Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]