U.S. artist, Lacañgan, has released his latest single, Cool, and we’ve been taking a listen here at the Send Me Your Ears studio. Well known on the San Diego scene, Lacañgan’s style has been compared to the likes of Bruno Mars. Cool explores the vulnerability of being exposed to love.
“Cool” grabs your attention straight away with some very authentic sounding 70s soul instrumentation and a quick drum fill. Then, you’re straight into a very funky groove that makes you want to sway your hips!
Lacañgan has a great soul voice, and stands easily with some of the more classic soul names. His use of vibrato is great and he has some real passion and control in his vocals.
The backing vocals are smooth and creamy and reminded us of the blues, soul and R&B voices from days gone by who would crowd around one microphone and make the lead vocalist sound even better. There’s some great stereo in the backing vocals.
Cool is accentuated by some super-funky slap and pop bass lines, together with some nice slides. It feels to us that the bass is in charge of this song, and makes sure that everything falls into place around it.
Instrumentally, there’s also some strings and keys filling out the sound, and we think we may have caught the sound of some synth style brass in there too. Everything adds to a full sound and bolsters up those smooth lead vocals.
Awesome key change at about 3 minutes in! This helps to maintain interest for the listener and is always a good choice in this style of music. it worked really well, and made us all smile and nod!
The chorus is catchy and the incidental and distant guitar riffs that come and go serve to fill in the gaps when there’s no vocals. All in all Cool is a well thought out song.
For us, the modern production just detracted slightly from the dynamics of the song. Cool has been very heavily compressed and pressed up against the limiter which, whilst it does serve to make the song nice and loud in our ears, we feel that it just takes away a little “feel” and passion from an otherwise great song.
Feeling a little like a Boyz II Men track, Cool is a modern sounding song in some ways, and a nostalgic trip down memory lane in other ways. With modern production, and authentic old school soul and R&B instrumentation this is just the kind of song that will introduce a whole new generation to soul music.