Today at the Send Me Your Ears studio, we’ve been listening to the folk rock sensibilities of Dionne Sturdy-Clow, with her latest (4th) single, No Way.
Dionne is just 20 years old and from Doncaster, UK. She says that she loves to sing songs that mirror the people she meets in her life. Perfect – all the best songs are written from personal experiences. Dionne has just started performing and looks to be confidently lining up plenty of bookings. This is hardly surprising – her music, or at least, what we’ve heard today, is absolutely the perfect fit for a summer festival.
No Way is a song that speaks of bitter coffee and tattoo regrets. In her own words “I was cold tired hungover heartbroken and stressed….so I stayed in bed and wrote a song”. We’re glad she did!
No Way starts immediately on vocals. With a confident, punky and rocky feel to the vocals, we were reminded in places of Meredith Brooks. There’s some lovely tricks up Dionne’s vocal sleeves, and she uses them to perfection.
The rise and fall in this track is superb. A fun, danceable and sublimely catchy track, this reminded us at times of Mumford and Sons. Starting on just vocals and guitar, the percussion and bass, extra vocals and extra instrumentation comes and goes throughout this song and keeps you on your toes at all times. We like the harmony vocals as well as the distant octave vocals, this song has all the hallmarks of a true festival winner.
From a production perspective, the acoustic guitar is resonating on the G so a surgical EQ cut at 196Hz would reduce the peaky tone. Also, in certain places where the bass is playing high descending note pattern the frequencies are clashing with the guitar creating a muddy sound. A wider cut in the bass centred around 200Hz would help to make the low mids a little clearer. There is a slightly honky feeling to the track so a small but fairly wide cut centred around 800Hz would help to balance the track out a little.
Dionne Sturdy-Clow was a new name to us today, but based on No Way, this is a name that we’ll be looking out for in the future. Expect to see her name on festival posters across the UK throughout 2023 and beyond.