We were happy to find that Jesse Grossi had snuck to the top of our pile of reviews this morning. We reviewed his super-catchy indie rock song, Outcast, a few weeks ago and today we’re looking at his latest single; Queen of Spades.
Jesse has a truly authentic California Indie Rock vocal. Just nasal enough to recognise it fits that genre perfectly, but not so nasal that you’re reaching for the volume knob! There’s a quality in Jesse’s vocal which displays a real confidence and a true authenticity. We think we may have mentioned this in our last review but it bears repeating.
Queen of Spades is a love song…nawww! Its about meeting that special someone and then meeting them again in your dreams. This positivity feels as though Queen of Spades has all the boxes ticked and ready for a Summer hit on the West coast.
Queen of Spades has an exciting, almost live feeling, start. There’s crowd noise and someone clearly calling to the crowd. It generates excitement in the listener before you’re even off the starting blocks.
The vocals have very modern production on them. They’re heavily compressed and lacking vibrato. There’s a twangy/metallic tinge in the quality of them. The lead vocals are front and centre and right in your face, relentlessly. If they weren’t so good it would be kinda annoying!
We absolutely loved the almost reggae/rap section in the middle. Queen of Spades isn’t just your typical California surf rock – this is some mind-bendingly genre crossing stuff!
The production on the backing of the track feels much more like a rock track and because the vocals are so up front it almost feels as though they’re not quite sitting in the mix. They are indeed the focus of attention but there’s some gorgeous reverb-drenched Surf-style guitar riffs that are sneaking through whenever they get the chance.
From a production point of view, there’s a lot of information in the sub bass which most modern speakers can’t really handle. We’d suggest a wide shelf cut in the bottom 2 octaves, focussed particularly around 60Hz. We’d also suggest a small but wide cut around 1kHz to take out a few dominating middle frequencies in the vocal effects.
Once again Jesse Grossi has produced a spectacular, radio friendly and authentic California indie rock track in Queen of Spades. We are happy to be along for the ride in his journey and look forward to hearing a great deal more from this talented West Coast Artist.