Fresh out of Dublin, Ireland, is a new alt rock artist, PRTLND. His latest single, Burned Out has been in our ears at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
PRTLND is a “one man band” artist. Playing all the instruments on the track and singing, together with programming the drums himself, mixing the track in his home studio and then sending it elsewhere to be mastered.
Burned Out is a break up song. It’s a reminder of relationships that we thought would last forever but have slowly burned out. It’s about the sadness and the realisation that a relationship has run its course and is now “burned out”.
Sounding a little like a Scorpions/Radiohead/Nick Cave crossover, Burned out is a 90s rock feeling track which washes over you with PRTLND’s warm and powerful low vocals radiating through the song.
Burned Out is nicely mixed with all instruments being given plenty of their own space within the track to shine. The California-style reverb drenched lead guitar is a feature throughout the track and interplays nicely with the vocal melody whilst occasionally taking the lead.
Kudos to the bass playing on this track. It is interesting and melodic and regularly stole our attention throughout the track without being dominating. It carries some lovely melodies of its own and shows the versatility of this new alt rock artist.
Very occasional and subtle backing harmonies fill the sound out in places and work very well indeed. We also particularly liked the instrumental breakdown towards the end of the song.
At over 4 minutes, Burned Out is likely to garner the most success with local radio, internet radio and perhaps BBC Introducing. More commercial stations tend to be super-picky about length, especially with new artists.
From a production perspective, there’s a great balance of frequencies overall throughout the track. The electronic drums used could, in our opinion, benefit from some more hi-hats, rides, crashes, etc. to add some more brightness to the track. Because of the peaks in the drum track, the overall track is somewhat quieter than similar commercial releases and we’d suggest limiting the drum track to knock off about 5dB. More compression and a limiter on the overall output will give the whole track more warmth, punch and life and we’d suggest once the drums are limited, that around 5-8dB of make up gain could be added back in which, in our opinion, will really bring the track to life.
Burned Out is a wonderful, warm track from an exciting new artist. PRTLND has managed to capture all the angst of a relationship that has fizzled, whilst also bringing some truly emotive performances on vocals and guitar to the table. We can’t wait to hear more.