Uk Based artist Fanchon is set to release a new track, Rsm Smile, on February 25 2022. We grabbed a quick earful ahead of release date.
This song starts super-gently with just some really quiet guitar which gives all the more power and punch to the full song when the rest of the instrumentation comes in with a real blast of authority and confidence.
I’m drawn instantly to a fragile and vulnerable voice that sits almost incongruously against the heavy grunge-like guitar backing. The vocal is clear and nicely dominant in the verses.
The drums on this track are really punching through nicely and , apart from the vocal, this track put me in mind of the likes of Nirvana.
I like the slightly unpredictable chords in the chorus. They add interest to the song and keep the listener on their toes.
As I mention, I’m really drawn to the vocalist in the verses and that in itself is why I’m a little disappointed in the choruses. There’s so much going on with the guitars that I just can’t make out any lyrics at this point. If that’s intentional, then its fine – the guitars are really powerful and well played and aggressive. They add so much meat to the song and the overall backing of the track is nicely mixed. However, I’d look into a lot more compression on the vocal track to make it sit more dominantly in the mix. Perhaps consider finding a guitar frequency to notch out to make the vocals sit better too.
I’m guessing Fanchon is quite a young vocalist. There’s a weakness in her low notes (“frown” for example) that can be remedied to a certain extent with compression but more likely for the time being a better solution would be to avoid notes this low. I feel like they let down an otherwise superb voice.
This is the first we’ve heard from Fanchon and we’re excited by their energy. This is some great work for a bedroom producer, and with a little tweak on the vocal track this could become a very radio friendly track.
We give this song 3 ears out of 5
