Meltt’s “Eternal Embers” fires up hope in times of crisis

posted on September 22nd, 2023 at 7:19 AM

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By Angela Vannatter

Vancouver-based alterna-psychedelic rock band Meltt is no stranger to the existential crisis. Think back to 2020. While many of us were doing ab workouts on our living room floor, doom-scrolling on Twitter-X-whatever, and reluctantly logging onto our computers for the next Zoom happy hour, band members Ian Winkler (bass, keys, guitar), James Porter (guitar, bass, keys, vocals), Chris Smith (lead vocals, guitar, bass, keys), and Jamie Turner (drums, percussion) were feeding a new flame. From the ashes of the dark and barren experience that was the peak of COVID-19, the band’s sophomore album Eternal Embers was born.

“There was smoke for the whole first week,” says Smith via video. “It was really bad, dense smoke. You couldn’t really go out for more than a few minutes at a time without hurting your lungs.”

Yet, amidst the hellscape that was the pandemic compiled with the painful effects of forest fires, Meltt found an inferno of inspiration.

“We kept coming up with themes of decay and growth, death and rebirth,” recalls Porter. “Cycles of things being recreated.”

In comes the album title, Eternal Embers (it drops today: September 22). Turbulent times still resound, even with the pandemic (mostly) behind us. As we reckon with a housing crisis, climate crisis, drug crisis (choose your own crisis, really), music can be a vessel to disassociate from reality, or to process it. Just like a bright ember that survives a dying spark, Meltt approaches life with a kindling of hope.

“This album is supposed to provide you with strength to confront [reality] in a productive, positive way,” explains Porter. “We just hope that whoever’s listening has some sort of cathartic journey by the end of it. We want to leave people in a positive, optimistic place.”

Turn on tracks like “The Absent Sea” and you’ll be confronted with a wave of your own existentialism, digesting lyrics like “wall of haze evolving, wake me up/state of mind’s revolving, check my pulse/flow of entropy, let it bleed/sing my melody to the absent sea.” But while we all may feel like we want to combust from time to time, Eternal Embers offers a perspective rooted in agency. Songs like “Do You Ever Wonder” suggest that perhaps you aren’t so alone in your own dread, opening with “it’s okay to do as you feel/did you ever wonder how we came to be/soon our lives will go on by/but every day’s a chance to find a better way.”

“If it’s a mirror of what we’re going through, there are going to be people out there who relate to that,” says Turner. Smith adds: “If you’re a younger kid, some of those albums you grew up listening to stick with you your whole life. It’s a fundamental album for you that can almost change your life.” With Eternal Embers, Meltt is setting out to be that album.

Older tracks like “Full of You”, “Love Again”, “Glow”, and “On Your Own” produced millions of streams for Meltt. Still, Porter describes the release of Eternal Embers as “in a weird way, the real beginning of the band.”

Oddly, considering Meltt’s warm melodies and striking synths, they still can’t believe people are buying their music. Excitedly, Smith shares that “we’re able to make vinyl and people are buying it! These are dream things we always wanted to do.”

On Eternal Embers, Meltt is maturing in more ways than one. In this period of tremendous growth, Porter also shares that it is the first album Meltt has worked on in its entirety with Ian Winkler (bass, keys, guitar), creating an exciting new chemistry.

“We’re baring our souls with these words a lot of the time. Having that kind of vulnerability with each other makes the music stronger, and the songwriting as well,” shares Winkler. “Everyone just wants to make the best music that also expresses themselves.”

Seems like everything is melt(t)ing together for the local band that could.