Formed in 2019, Strawberry Cough are a Salt Lake City (US) band with a primary emphasis on a mixture of shoegaze and early 2000s style rock. Their debut single, My Song 19, is out now and we’ve been taking a long hard listen here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
My Song 19 is a lo-fi, almost punk-like track that reminded us in many places of perhaps early Jam or the Clash.
There’s some interesting effects early on in the vocal track – the lead vocal has almost a playground like chorus of voices underneath it. Reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, perhaps.
We have to give kudos to the bass playing in particular on this track. It’s interesting, characterful and in places feels like it’s taking the lead.
There’s some good use of silences throughout the track to separate the sections well and to keep the listener invested.
There’s a really interesting and rather well done change of pace at about 2 minutes in where the punishing rhythm and punky feel to the track is momentarily dropped and the song becomes much more of a dreamy, shoegaze feeling track. This continues for about a minute before at 2m50, you’re back into the full band sound with some punishing rhythm and power.
The dual guitar solo to the end reminded us a little of early Clapton or perhaps Lynyrd Skynrd style guitar solos. Expertly performed and a quite exhilarating ride.
The guitar tracks are slightly panned left and right, giving the track a little tiny amount of stereo but for the most part, My Song 19 is a mono track. It would help enormously to add some stereo into the drum track. It feels almost as though it has been recorded with just one mic in the middle of the room. A compressor or limiter on the drums will also help to give a little more punch to the track. We’d also suggest a boost of the top octave to give some more brightness and definition to the drums.
For a debut single, this is a promising start. My Song 19 is a fun, explosive burst of powerful lo-fi rock/garage rock. We imagine that Strawberry Cough are a great band to watch live and would urge any reader in the Salt Lake City area to check out their gig dates.