We’ve had the music of US artist, Nate Hadley, in our ears at the Send Me Your Ears studio. His latest single, Sunset over Paris, has just been released.
Sunset Over Paris is a heartfelt song written after the death of a friend. It’s about the unfinished projects and incomplete dreams that people leave behind. It’s about making sure that the people who we lose are never forgotten. A wonderful sentiment and Hadley’s heartwarming lyrics are the centre of this gentle singer-songwriter track.
We like the lo-fi approach to the production on this track. The minimalistic approach leaves the listener totally focussed on listening to the lyrics, rather than being distracted by huge production and excessive instrumentation.
The vocals on this track are extremely close and intimate. You feel as though you’re in the same room as Nate as he’s just telling the story of his lost friend. It’s a vulnerable and fragile performance, but one of hope as he strives to ensure that his loss is our gain.
Sunset Over Paris is a simple singer-songwriter style song. The intimate vocals are accompanied in the choruses by an octave vocal and some gentle background vocals.
The guitar is gently strummed, with the occasional little lick. It almost sounds like a ukulele at times, giving the song a charming feel that you could imagine hearing round the campfire for the first time.
Piano is added as the song progresses, panned to the left and adding a straight rhythm into a swing song. It’s an interesting idea that the Beatles used very effectively.
At times, there’s a guitar added which follows the lead vocal melody and helps fill out the sound. Gentle percussion is slowly added, but the vocals remain very much the only real focus of the track. There’s even some very distant harmonica riffs thrown in for good measure!
With no bass in the track, we’d suggest a high pass at around 80Hz. There’s nothing but general rumble anything below 80Hz and removing these frequencies would give plenty more headroom to the rest of the track. Perhaps a wide boost centred around 6kHz will give some extra life to the track and bring out the percussion and the personality of the vocals a little more.
We’d suggest quite a lot more compression on the vocal track to balance out the peaks in the vocal track. It’s great that the vocals are very much the focus, but this will make them just a little steadier and sit more comfortably in the track.
Vocally feeling a little like Rufus Wainwright, Nate Hadley has managed to produce a very heartfelt and emotional tribute to a lost friend in a song that is both relatable and powerful. We’re excited to hear more from this emerging artist.