UK based CCM artist, Peter Barnardo, hit us up today with his latest single, Overshadow. This is a peaceful and calming worship track that just soars in your ears.
Overshadow starts with some rather cool drum patterns before moving quickly into some absolutely glorious dreamy chorus guitar. The song develops well as bass is added and lots of instrumentation comes and goes to make the listener feel positively euphoric.
Barnardo has a beautiful folky voice that sits comfortably in the mix. His falsetto moments, in particular, are a joy to listen to.
There’s some really good use of cymbals in this track. We love how the shimmering cymbals alert the listener to a new section of the song and add to the euphoric feeling.
There’s a lovely change around 2 minutes 40 seconds where the song just picks up a little more energy. This is an exciting change of pace and helps to maintain the listener’s interest.
The title line “You Overshadow Me” is repeated many times throughout the song, serving to make the listener feel comfortable in the song and perhaps, if used as a worship song, make them tune out a little and focus on their emotions.
The song builds dramatically throughout. Just looking at the shape of the song on the screen you can see constant progression all the way through. One thing that we think may have been cool, from a scoring and also worship perspective, would have been to add some extra distant voices as the song progresses. Perhaps like a congregation joining in.
The song ends as gently as it starts, with some superb dreamy chorus guitar and the listener is left at the end feeling emotionally satisfied. This anthemic track will no doubt be a great hit amongst CCM communities and CCM specific radio stations. Perhaps a little long for commercial radio, this track is most definitely one which will have great appeal amongst the Christian community.
From a production perspective, and of course just our own, we’d suggest a shelf boost as high as 250Hz to gain a little more warmth and fullness in the low end, especially in the guitar intro. A drop around 500Hz will sort out a touch of boxiness, especially in the vocal track (probably created during the recording process). A top end shelf boost from 2kHz upwards will add some extra life, definition and presence to the track. Of course, the above EQ suggestions will also raise the volume of the track and bring it more in to line with the volume of other commercial releases.
Overshadow is a warm and inviting, euphoric journey of faith, with some stunning guitar work, gentle vocals and some wonderful swells. We look forward to hearing more from Peter Barnardo.