Chilwell Kemp
Chilwell Kemp - Little Rock Arkansas USA
Reaching out to us through Twitter/X, Chilwell Kemp sent us their track 'Pushin Too Hard' to review.
The first thing that stands out about this track is that the overall production has a raw quality indicative of being a live performance rather than a studio recording. Everything is placed well enough in the recording to come across clearly, though all of the instruments feel like they would benefit from a higher quality production, which would give this song a more polished feel. There are a number of tracks on the band's Spotify profile which sound like they have a more professional level of production, so we have to assume this particular track is a favorite of the band, as this is the one they've requested we take a look at.
Defining the genre of any band or artist is a difficult task, made a little more daunting when looking only at one particular composition, though in an effort to provide relevant context, we would lean towards labeling 'Pushin Too Hard' as Indie/Rock with a tangible 'American' feel.
Built upon what is a clearly competent rhythm section, the body of this song is provided by what can best be described as a Jangly/Clean/Echo laden strummed guitar track, breaking only to make way for a lead break. Too short to be a traditional solo, the lead guitar is interesting, creative, undoubtably played by a skilled guitarist and provides a welcome contrast to the rhythm guitar.
It may sound unfair to say that the vocals are the weakest aspect of this song. But unfortunately, whatever method was employed in the recording process, has left the vocal track masked by a mixture of the aforementioned raw recording and what sounds like a little too much vocal FX. In truth, the melody is well written and catchy, though for the most part the lyrics are a little hard to discern under the reverb, and almost distant quality of the recording. There are a few moments where the vocals waver in to 'out of tune' territory, which coupled with a handful of 'rimshots/missed hits' on the drums, and the general raw nature of the song as a whole, leads us to fell that this recording somewhat undersells both this song, and this band as a whole.
In conclusion, this song feels like a roughly recorded demo, or a hastily captured live track. If this song was a bonus track on an album, or the audio track to a live performance captured on film, then it's shortcomings would feel completely understandable. As a single, or as in this case, a song being shown to the world with the intention of being reviewed, our advice to Chilwell Kemp would be 'You have songs with a much better production, maybe lead with one of those in your promotional efforts, as this songs production does unfortunately undermine some of it's artistic quality.' Judging this song solely on it's musical content, we would have to say that 'Pushin Too Hard' is a functional indie/rock track, simple, catchy, fun to listen to with a few interesting moments. We would definitely be interested in hearing a polished, more produced version of this track, in which case we imagine it would be something that would not feel out of place on the car stereo on a sunny day driving though the country.