For lovers of Biffy Clyro, and later Green Day, I urge you to go check out Stay For Tomorrow’s latest single, Prison Living. This was the first we’d heard of Dunfermline’s Stay For Tomorrow, but we’re hooked and will definitely be listening out for more.
The rise and fall in this great 90s inspired track is spot on. I particularly liked the moment where everything was “all rise” and then just dropped back to vocals and drums – and with some spectacular work on the drums. Interesting fills and lovely stereo on the drum track.
There’s something really unique and characterful about hearing an artist singing in their own accent. Singing with a slightly American accent makes for easier pitch control, especially for diphthong vowel sounds where the jaw is constantly on the move while the singer is trying to control the pitch. It has just become the way in modern music to simplify vowels. Stay For Tomorrow, however, have gone along the lines of The Beatles, The Proclaimers and Elbow to name but a rare few and I love them for this. A really crystal clear and strong Scottish accent in the lead vocals makes for an exciting listen. Great stuff!
A beautiful guitar solo that’s both simple but well placed carries this track back into the vocal/drum section before exploding off back into the full song to the end. I just love this!
Prison living is an interesting subject matter (the story of two partners who are ready to split but just haven’t got round to saying it to each other yet) and an extremely well written song. I can picture this track doing well on BBC Introducing.
In my opinion, there are spots where the vocals are a little lost and covered by other instruments in the same frequency range, whilst they’re perfectly clear when there’s less instrumentation. I would suggest a top end boost from around 4000 upwards to bring out some life and presence in the track. There’s a slight honk (for want of a better word) in the guitar and vocal effects that I’d suggest a little dip in the mids would clear up. Boosting the overall track at around 50Hz would make that kick drum come through with a little more oomph as well.
Prison Living is a characterful hark back to the 1990s and Stay For Tomorrow are most definitely a band on the up. One we’ll be keeping an eye on and one who really made us nod our heads and smile today. Thanks guys!
We give this song four ears out of five.
