Coventry, (UK) artist, The Confederation, have been in our ears today with their latest single, Friday. Out now on all streaming platforms.
In their own words, Friday is about “a couple that consume each other like hamburgers, each ‘pretending’ not to want more.” We were intrigued enough by this description to take a good long listen!
The Confederation were a new artist to us today, but after what we’ve heard, we’ll be sure to be looking out for them and following their progress.
With an almost Deacon Blue feel in places, Friday, is a bouncy, positive and very catchy feeling song that has something of a retro soul feel to it.
Although we cite Deacon Blue, there’s also something really quite unique about the sound. Friday has a very live feel to the recording, and gives us the impression that The Confederation are likely the kind of act that you wouldn’t want to miss performing live if you get the chance. The confidence in the performance makes us think that, whilst this is a stand out track, their energy will be in the live show environment.
There’s great use of rise and fall throughout this track, and particularly good use of silences to add tension and ensure the listener is really paying attention.
The song has male and female vocals throughout and they harmonise well together. The vocal section that particularly stood out for us though was the female ad libbing style section around 2m20s. This showed us that she has very much more to give than just harmony. It had a real old soul/ blues rock quality to the vocal and we’d love to hear more of this in their music.
Some great incidental electric guitar riffs and a wonderful use of 16 beat tambourine in the break down, together with some really classy choices of fills on the drums make this 3 minute track an absolute burst of enjoyment.
From a production perspective, we’d suggest adding a few more effects in to the vocals, and some additional panning of instruments to create a more stereo track. Creating a little more stereo in the track will make for a more authentic live feel and most likely will represent their live show more effectively. A cut around 600Hz will remove just a little “honk” in the vocal track, probably caused by the way they’ve been recorded, and certainly not as a quality of the superb vocals. A cut around 5kHz will remove just a little harshness in the percussion and a boost of the top octave to give a little more air to the overall track could aid in adding even more life to the track.
The Confederation have impressed us today with this light, bouncy and fun genre-crossing track. With great dual vocals, a get-up-and-dance rhythm and some fun feeling lyrics, this song is sure to please anyone looking for a positive dose of soul infused awesomeness!!