groan room – greasy thumbs

We were thrilled to receive another submission from the truly Northern rockers, Groan Room. We recently reviewed their single, Tesco Roof, and today we’re taking a listen to their latest, Greasy Thumbs.

Before we talk about Greasy Thumbs, we must reminded our readers that Groan Room’s song, Tesco Roof, was a wild ride of a song with several different sections throughout a 5 1/2 minute confusion of genre bending madness!

In a way, Greasy Thumbs, although shorter, takes this same stance. Several totally different sections throughout this song form together to keep the listener totally and utterly on their toes. Its almost as though Groan Room are there with you, waiting for you to get comfortable with the song, and at that exact moment you’ve decided you know where its going, they switch things up. Greasy Thumbs moves along with gentle picked electric guitars and minimal percussion for long enough to lull you into a false sense of security and then suddenly – heavy guitars, full drums for a brief period and then back. Then, once you’re comfortable with this, there’s another total change of pace at around 2 minutes in. This song will keep you on your toes and we’re growing to love the challenge of Groan Room’s antics. Their unique style of squeezing several songs into one is a whole heap of fun.

We like the Northern Britishness about this song. The vocalists accent is clear and the lyrics made us smile; “crisps and crumbs, licked our greasy thumbs” or “I give a thousand f*cks what you think”. Northern British humour at its best.

Greasy thumbs is a song about the simplicity of a happy relationship. Its about that comfortableness you feel with a companion you’ve known a long time and the guys nail it here. We were particularly drawn to the well delivered, but very vulnerable vocals of the end line of the song.

Overall, Greasy Thumbs is missing in stereo, which could be an issue for any airplay on mono/AM radio stations. We’d suggest a little more panning of instruments and finding as many ways as possible to get more stereo into the track.

From a production point of view, we’d suggest a dip in the snare track at around 140Hz. The tuning of the snare is a little dominant to our ears and this should help take some thump and add a little brightness into it. The cymbals are a little dominant too in the 4-5kHz range, making them sound a little – and we’re having to make up a word here – “shasssshy”. Make that sound – you’ll understand what we mean!

Greasy Thumbs is just a touch quieter than most comparable commercial releases so we’d suggest some compression and make up gain should help bring the track more into line if Groan Room are looking for air play.

Overall, we’re becoming more and more enamoured with Groan Room. With their strong accent in the vocals, the uniquely British lyrics and the utter quirkiness of composition they may well take a few listens to get the hang of, but once you do…you’ll be hooked!