Review Summary: Some quality songwriting backed up by some messy instrumentation and production
Callum Bacon is a singer-songwriter out of Bradford. His debut single “how you feel” was released earlier this year, is backed up with this EP later on. For the short time his music has been out he has been doing well spreading it around. For the purpose of this review, I will be covering each song off of the three-song EP individually in order to give an accurate representation of the EP as a whole.
Track 1: How you feel
This is the first of many downbeat tracks on this EP. It has pleasant singing and gentle guitar work and makes for a nice lost love ballad. My biggest issue comes from the lack of interesting production and some messy mixing. The application of reverb on this track leaves a lot to be desired, as it makes the track feel hollow and a bit dull at times. The electric guitar feels shoehorned in, with it not matching the sombre tone of the track. I feel this track could do with an acoustic-only version, as it would match the depressing tone of the track. Good start to his discography.
Score: 3.5/5
Track 2: Funny
At first, I liked this track, but after listening to it a few times it feels quite an uninteresting and monotonous track. Bacon's slow moans at the beginning of the track feel uninspired and don’t add to the overall track in any way. I don’t like the electronic drums in the background, they get drowned out and are too quiet to add anything substantial. I do enjoy the spiteful lyrical content and the dead voiced delivery fits them very well. In general, the guitars feel out of place in the song and could do with some piano keys instead. It feels like an emptier Lewis Capaldi song. I honestly don’t see myself returning to this song as the instrumentation and mixing lets it down too much.
Score: 2/5
Track 3: Going down
This track is probably the worst lyrically but the best performance-wise. It puts Callum into where he should be, an acoustic performer with only his guitar. However, I would call this song incomplete as it sounds too demo-ish. The vocals sound unmastered and the entire thing just fell incomplete. That doesn’t stop me from liking as a demo. It reminds me of a lot of Noel Gallagher's demo for gas panic, in the sense it could be considered finished, but just needs a bit of work.
Score: 3/5
Overall score: 3/5
A decent first effort that leaves plenty of room for improvement. I don’t know if I would market this as an EP, I would personally have “how you feel” be a single and the other two tracks would be B-sides. Whatever the case, these songs are mostly solid and with a few minor improvements would all be consistently great.
