Stoke On Trent (UK) based band, Camens, have just released their latest single, Poltergeist. An alt-rock/ Britpop anthem that we’ve been thoroughly enjoying taking a good long listen to here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
The song starts really powerfully with electric guitar sat under some super-clear vocals. A quick moment of silence at around 20 seconds then the song bursts into a full band rock song.
Everything about this track screams commercial Britpop appeal. The vocals are very current sounding and very British. A nice cockney moment early (“letting myself in”) on in the track lets you know this is most definitely Britpop in case you hadn’t already figured it out. Vocally, the lead singer has some great dynamics. Just a touch of gravel in his voice for the most part, but some spectacular falsetto moments display a superb range of techniques. At times there are many layers of vocals and we think we heard some octave (above) vocals in places too, all of which help fill out the sound fantastically.
There’s some great fuzz effects on the vocals in places and throughout the track, the effects on the vocals change which really helps maintain the listener’s interest.
The repeated riff on the electric guitar helps again to bring in the listener and the use of stops is very effective in this track.
The song builds and builds to a stinger ending. It’s nice and loud and punchy and a very radio friendly length at just over 3 minutes. There’s something really rather anthemic about this track that sweeps you along and made us all nod our heads in many places!
We smiled at Camen’s biography. They’ve some fantastic stories as one would expect from a band who’ve been performing together for a while, and to us, they sound like a band who take their music pretty seriously, but make damn sure that they have fun whilst they’re doing it. We’d dearly love to see them perform live. They must be a real joy to watch.
From a production perspective, we’d personally suggest a little cut around 1kHz to take out just a little “honk” in the vocal track, probably caused during the recording process and certainly not in the voice itself, which we love! A boost in the low mids will add a little extra warmth to the overall track and shelf boost of the top 3 octaves will add a little more brightness to the track – especially the vocals and cymbals.
Camens have produced a very commercial sounding, radio friendly Britpop track with their latest release, Poltergeist. A very strong track which oozes some real class from a band that we’ll be watching from now on.