Ben Pratt is set to release “I Love The Way”; the first of three singles from his upcoming EP, Reflections.
This is a four and a half minute, piano led song with some superb piano playing a la Ben Folds Five.
The song starts on piano and vocals and develops slowly until the drums kick in and starts to take off a little more.
There’s some subtle harmonies that come in nicely, which get stronger and as the song goes on, they are in places, as loud as the lead vocal.
Lyrically interesting – the story of a one sided relationship with a toxic partner. The song takes the listener through a range of emotions.
I like Ben’s voice. It took me a little while to settle into it, and honestly, it kinda feels like it took him a while to settle in too. Its not until he hits some high notes that I really started to warm to it. There were hints of George Ezra in his voice.
I’m here to give honest and gentle constructive criticism, and I personally feel that this song needs a little re-working. I hope this is read by Ben in the spirit its intended.
Ben’s voice is great, but what takes a little of the enjoyment of it out for me is the production and the way the vocal has been recorded. There’s absolutely no top end in the voice in the EQ range which makes the song sound generally a little muddy. Perhaps its been recorded with a cheap mic, perhaps too much gain caused the track to hiss and therefore its been turned down. Either way, I messed with some pretty drastic EQ changes to bring this more into line with more commercial releases. More compression on the voice will help too.
With all of this in mind, I stand by this as great songwriting, and a great composition and I can see Ben making some huge strides forward with some help from the BIMM (where he is studying – kudos – some huge names have come out of there). Most importantly, we believe that there is a bright future for Ben Pratt and look forward to hearing what he does next.
We give this song 3 ears out of 5
