Brooklyn (US) Singer-songwriter, Dilip, has just released his latest single, Lemon Tart, and we’ve been taking a few listens here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
We always love a good story behind a song and with Lemon Tart, we were impressed at the ability of Dilip to expand on a simple subject matter. Here’s the story in his own words;
“When writing “Lemon Tart”, my feelings were exactly like the dessert my ex used to make. Sweet, airy, comforting memories of our time together co-exist with the sour taste of how it all ended. Shimmering guitar melodies give way to distorted walls of sound, as my emotions unravel and I can’t help but long for just a little more.”
Lemon Tart is a thoroughly enjoyable lo-fi track with a super catchy chorus. Starting on gentle guitar strums, the layered vocals reminded us in places of Jack Johnson. There’s an easy and effortless feeling to the vocals as if Dilip is totally confident in his ability to share this great story. At times the vocals are doubled, and at other times there’s some gentle harmonies.
The song develops swiftly and at around 30 seconds in, Lemon Tart becomes more of a full band sound. The drums and dreamy picked guitar fill the sound nicely and help maintain interest.
We particularly liked the Terrorvision feeling choruses. They’re slightly heavier in feel to the verses and there’s just a touch of drive on both the vocals and guitar. This is really catchy and each time it came around, we felt more invested in the song.
A stop into a change of pace breakdown section was also a nice touch. This is a well crafted track.
Lemon Tart has a very sudden ending. A sound, perhaps mimicking a “stop button” on the recording signifies the song is over. Possibly meaning that Dilip is well and truly over his thoughts of his ex and their cooking skills?!
To our ears the track could use a little balancing between the low and high frequencies. This can be achieved with some careful EQing. Firstly, a hi-pass filter set around 40Hz to remove some of the sub bass rumble followed by a cut at around 50-55Hz to reduce some excessive tones in the kick drum. The acoustic guitar is peaking around 180-190Hz which is most noticeable during the intro but is muddying up the track a little later on when the rest off the instruments come in. Also, the track is a little heavy around 350-400Hz, particularly in the vocal track. This is resulting in some occasional boxy tones and adds to a slight lack of clarity in this area. Finally, a wide and fairly large boost across the high mids and highs centred around 10kHz would add a great deal of clarity, presence and overall brightness to the track.
We thoroughly enjoyed this enchanting and catchy indie-pop song. A great theme for a song that has been executed well. We look forward to hearing more from Dilip!