shut up and listen

The track begins with an acoustic guitar. Its a clean, close miked steel string – you can hear the plectrum strums. And it feels slightly off to the right.

After a few bars of intro the lead vocal enters, dead centre. At the pattern change mid way through the first verse the bass guitar, second acoustic (off to the left) and percussion enters. For the final line of the verse the drums enter and the vocal is reinforced by a harmony. It is a neat and subtle way to introduce all the instruments, so that they are all trucking along quite naturally by the second verse.

The percussion sound on every second snare beat sounds like smashing crockery – could be a sample because it sounds identical for each occurrence.

After the second verse the pre-chorus features piano and additional percussion that sounds like distant banging on metal or clanging cymbals. There seems to be a pad of some sort, probably an organ, filling out this section to build it up for the chorus.

The chorus is a return to the chords and instrumentation of the verses but with full vocal harmonies singing the title just twice.

The third verse is much the same as the second. Except that at the end a slide guitar line takes over from the lead vocal as the main focal point for a brief instrumental break. It is soaked in reverb and slightly off to the right.

This is followed by a pre-chorus that has the piano more noticeable in the mix. This is followed by several choruses that feature full group vocals with some variations in the lead vocal. There seems to be a slight build here, hard to tell how it is done, is the percussion getting fuller and busier? Or is everything just slightly rising in volume?

The final chord strum is given a nice healthy 10 seconds or so to fade out naturally.

Overall a deceptively involved production. It seems simple at first – a short acoustic track with little drama but closer inspection reveals several elements that arrive at different times. Generally speaking though it is a very ‘natural’ sounding production – very little in the way of obvious processing, with all the elements sounding ‘played’.