Chris Jobe has released a new song, Love Hangover, and it’s a really exciting adventure in cross genre experimentation.
The song fooled me at the start, it had a 60s feel to it and I was led to expect that it was going to continue in a kind of Beatles-esque style. More fool me!
Love Hangover launches into a really modern, commercial sounding chorus with modern production and a really catchy feel to it. This isn’t jarring, and the song develops well from here. The repeated chorus throughout brings the listener back to something comfortable before taking you off at a tangent. Love Hangover keeps you on your toes! But then of course… so does any kind of hangover and I wonder if that’s what the writer was going for. Its disorienting, confusing and you just don’t know what’s going to happen next.
The muted trumpet section made me wonder if I’d accidentally clicked through to another song, but the distinctive vocals return to let you know that the writer is just teasing. There’s an absolutely gorgeous keys section in the middle, together with an almost rap like moment (kudos for the fast vocal section, that’s a real skill).
The layered vocals are stunning. Really well recorded and well placed. They feel just sumptuous. Excellent stuff.
My personal opinion on the production would be to give a fairly wide cut centered around 500-800Hz. This would be mostly to balance vocals out, but it would affect the whole track, obviously. I feel this would remove just a little of the honky/boxy nuances and bring the vocals stronger into the mix.
I really like this from Chris Jobe. A really exciting, keep-you-on-your-toes song which defies genre boundaries and pushes the listener to think.
We give this four ears out of five
