Back in April (2022), we reviewed SJ Denney’s beautiful song, All I’ve Ever Known. At the time we felt it was easily our track of the week so we here at the Send Me Your Ears studio were super excited to see SJ Denney appear at the top of our reviews pile today. Here with his latest single, I Don’t Know If This Changes Things?, Denney has hit it out of the park again with a wonderfully smooth singer-songwriter/ art rock gentle ballad.
What can we say about a track that wowed us so much?! The brush work on the snare is absolutely gorgeous – light and bright and perfectly positioned in the track. The use of a single note (Dwayne Eddy sprang to mind) baritone electric guitar to fill some gaps was positively inspired. A gentle piano adds some single notes as well, all used with great creativity and subtlety.
Speaking of subtle… the harmonies that come and go (from guest vocalist Roisin O’Hagan) are subtle and simply serve to make the lead thicker and fuller.
We love the subtle, panned, extra percussion that comes and goes throughout the track – another well considered touch.
The song has wonderful development with unpredictable changes that keep the listener enthralled from start to finish.
The muted trumpet… oh the muted trumpet is absolutely to die for. Reminding us in places of the muted trumpet on George Michael’s album, Older, this has been recorded extremely well. Notoriously difficult to mix in the high mids, muted trumpet can occasionally sound a touch piercing. Not here. This is world class.
The mix on this track is absolutely superb. It’s rare for us to hear such quality. There are a lot of different things happening and instruments used throughout this track, but it is so well mixed that at no point does it feel busy. The separation between the kick and bass is clear and they’re not clashing for the same EQ space as often happens. Our only suggestion might be some light compression and about 5dB of make up gain to increase the warmth, thickness and overall volume.
Once again, SJ Denney easily makes our “song of the week” list. This is pure class.