CHRIS CONSIDINE – DREAM AWAY

US artist, Chris Considine, has just released his latest single, Dream Away, and for lovers of indie folk, this one’s for you. We here at Send Me Your Ears have taken several thoroughly enjoyable listens today.

The moment Dream Away starts, you realise that you’re listening to a stellar musician. With beautiful acoustic guitar picking, you truly are listening to a guitar players guitar player!

The conversational lyrics of Dream Away are absolutely charming. A song about longing for something or someone who is far away from you and you know that the only way you can get to them is by daydreaming. Chris describes the song as being based on a memory from when he was younger and by writing the song he is simply returning to that time to tell the story. Considine gives a truly heart warming performance here and his voice is endearing and extremely likeable.

The harmony and layered vocals are beautiful in this track and are often used almost as a separate instrument. They really take the song to a new level and fill out the sound perfectly.

Dream Away develops well with drums being added at around 1 minute in but to start with they’re only there to emphasise certain sections. There’s some great separation between sections and the rise and fall in this track is well conceived and with great structure. This is some really classy songwriting and scoring.

Further into the track, there’s a simple instrumental section with a repeated and basic melody as the focus. This feels very much like a song that would work well in the background of a TV show and perhaps Considine should look into sync opportunities here – the stinger ending helps with this too!

There’s some definite Beatles influences happening here, but more than that, it feels throughout that it’s something that Paul Simon could have written. It has a definite “Graceland” album feel to it.

From a production perspective, a large and wide boost centred around 100Hz would bring out the warmth of the track and add to the punch of the kick drum when it comes in. A large shelf boost across the top 3 octaves would add to the brightness of the track. A small cut around 7kHz would reduce the potential for increased sibilance in the vocal track. In short we feel the track would benefit from more top and more bottom. The middle frequencies are perfectly represented by the vocals, guitars, etc. A light compressor and some make up gain would add some overall volume and bring the track more in line with other similar releases.

Dream Away is a gloriously charming indie folk track that we absolutely loved. With some sublimely good acoustic guitar playing, endearing and conversational vocals and a chorus of layered vocals, this simply is one you must add to your playlist now! We can’t wait to hear more from Chris Considine.