Having listened several times to this now on both my computer and my main system, believe it's time to finish up with my thoughts on this one.
I do remember some about
Marcy Levy (aka Marcella Detroit) mainly from her days with Eric Clapton in the 70's/80's.
Here's another example of her singing powers from a 1976 live Clapton band song captured off of The King Biscuit Flower Hour.
The song is one of my favs (I had captured that concert live back then on Reel to Reel) called- "One Night With You"
you can check it out here from the
wolfgang's vault. She can also play the harmonica really well, as you can hear on song #5 here called "Emotional Thing."
I really don't know much at all about
Siobhan Fahey.
I'm thinking the differences that a few folks have expressed about sound of this one may come down to a couple things.
1. The inconsistencies of the mix and punchiness from song to song. (I'll get into some examples later.)
2. Speakers... Speakers... Speakers... & one's room acoustics - (Everyone's set-up/gear is very different. For instance, some may have good matching speaker sets and others not. I don't BTW, but I did choose for my main speakers some Martin Logan's with Folded Motion style tweeters over what I initially tested out, which were some nice Paradigm models. The Paradigms were much brighter on the top end and bothered me a bit.)
I'm only reviewing the 5.1 mix here, not Atmos. The 5.1 does not appear to have any information in the LFE/.1 channel.
Usually what I do when getting a new disc is rip it and look at some of the songs in Audacity and see how they're structured. Depending on the "style" of the song (which varies somewhat here) the mixes can be substantially different.
A few examples:
Song #2 - I Don't Care
*Quite a bit of info in the Center. The rear left is not as loud as the right rear. The Center has some light vocals, ambient BUV vocals, a guitar picking a simple line, Synth, some percussion and a couple of sound effects.
The rears have some light vocals, acoustic guitar strums in the RR, various synth sounds; so overall pretty discrete and complex. The problem for me though is the balance is not what I like, the Right Rear is not too bad, but I would have preferred the Left Rear to be 2-5 dbs louder in various spots.
All the bass and drums appear to be in the Fronts, and the Center is mainly used as just a helper channel in support of the Fronts, but IMO could have been utilized a little more inventively with more discrete elements. I'm not even sure you'd miss it much if it wasn't even there.
-Amplitude levels are -4.7dbs Fronts, -15dbs Rear Left & -11.8dbs Rear Right. That's a wide spread from front to rears IMO.
View attachment 84410
Song #4 - Are We In Love Yet (This has a very funky Prince vibe to me and one of my favs on the album and a very different mix style along with song style.)
*Nothing in the Center channel or the LFE channel in this one.
-Amplitude on these channels are: -5.85dbs Fronts, -8dbs Rear Left & -7.9dbs Rear Right; this seems a much better balanced and enjoyable mix to me, but again it is a different style of song.
The Rear Left has mainly a funky wah wah guitar, the Rear Right has some similar sounding electric keyboard and both have some fairly upfront BUV sections and percussion. Again, all the Bass/Drums in the Fronts.
View attachment 84411
Song #6 - Stay
*Again nothing in the LFE, and only some very light ambient vocals, piano and a chime in the Center.
The Rear Left has some vocals that gradually push to the Rear Right and then opens up more with the BUV, also some synth in the Rear Right. You can see by the wav pic that the Rear Left is much lower overall than the Rear Right. About the 1:55 min. mark, the Right Rear has some substantial chunky guitar chording come in. Then as the song picks up intensity at about the 2:54 min. mark, the distorted crunchy guitar really explodes into the mix in the Rear Right (a bit too much IMO, as the song overall gets a little out of control sound wise.)
The amplitudes are: Fronts -4.59dbs; Center -23.38dbs; Rear Left -11.85dbs; Rear Right -9.99 dbs.
View attachment 84413
Anyway, just a few examples of the mixing choices in 5.1 on this one to chew on.
A couple of extra thoughts. I felt the first song, Goodbye Cruel World, has a David Bowie vibe to it, as there's a droning guitar note / synth that reminds me of the one in Bowie's Heroes song. There also are a few loud cymbal hits that are just wee bit crispy in a few songs. There are some songs where IMO they could have increased the rear volume a little more in the mix and made some more interesting discrete mixing choices in the Center and Rears overall.
Overall very enjoyable listen and I'm thrilled to have this one in this format; and thanks to Paul at SDE for getting this done!
My vote is an 8.
