Here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today, we’ve been listening to the latest single from New Brunswick, Canada artist, Franc O’cher. Stars At Night was released yesterday (6 March 2023).
Stars At Night starts with strummed acoustic guitar with some simple piano fills and drum pattern. Sounding a little reminiscent of early Eagles, the familiar feeling chord sequence quickly gets in your head and you find yourself drifting off to more nostalgic times.
Franc is French Canadian and sings in English. You can hear his accent in the songs and his voice is very reminiscent of Bob Dylan with a slight touch of Bryan Adams in some of the more forced and gravelly sections.
The song rises and falls gently with the addition of piano or a picked guitar pattern and just the occasional tambourine.
We must draw attention to the music video that Franc has put together for this track. With the lyrics across the screen, the video shows Franc in a shed-like home studio for the most part, with glimpses of him strumming the guitar in the Canadian winter. Our favourite part was definitely him lying on the floor trying to play acoustic guitar whilst his dogs climbed all over him, demanding his attention!
Ideas from our ears
A cut around 50Hz would reduce some boomy tones. A few cuts in the vocal track around 700Hz to 1.2kHz would control some slightly ‘nasal’ and ‘tinny’ sounds. A fairly hard compressor added to the vocal track would help make the volume a little steadier, reducing peaks and bringing up the quieter parts. A light compressor/limiter on the main track with around 5-6dB of make-up gain could give the track a little extra ‘thickness’ and warmth as well as raising the volume to match other commercial releases. As always, these are just some ideas from our ears.
Final thoughts
Stars At Night is a gentle singer-songwriter track for fans of Bob Dylan and perhaps John Prine, Neil Young or Tom Petty.
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https://francocher.bandcamp.com/
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