Silvertrain - Waiting

Hear The Track Here

Another day, another Silvertrain. This is one train you NEVER have to wait for, there is a Silvertrain track coming around every time I turn around, and after the welcome release of some studio material of the past couple of months, we go back to the tried-and-tested demo method. Waiting was in fact a hopeful contender for the Nine Lives EP session but looks like it lost out somewhere along the way. It is my contention, m'Lud, to prove that John Brandon (one half of Silvertrain) is a serial songwriter. The man is addicted, he cannot stop. A one man songwriting epidemic and I am not the only one to notice it, others have pointed and sniggered. M'Lud, it is in the public's best interests that this man be placed in a secure record company and put to work for the rest of his life so that he no longers pesters revei.... er... people.

I rest my case.

John has upped his demo game considerably over this past year and even got close to the sound I've always imagined he could get if he tried. While Waiting is a little step back from that high (Good People is the track I have in mind), it still shows that John is thinking a lot more about the total impact of the song on the listener and that's no bad thing. So what would I do faced with this track? Well, the very first thing I'd do is treat them poor, poor drums to a thorough-going service and then boost them well up in the mix. In this version they can hardly be heard. The same is true of the other instruments happening here. While obviously it's the tune that ultimately matters, the main guitar strum and the vocal just overshadow the backing track greivously.

Still, as a song, it's way up there in the 'ooh that's neat' parade of one minute wonders from this duo and I also wish now that it had made its way into the Nine Lives sessions, but I do think what is here could still be tidied up enough that it presented itself in a much better light. Rock has always been the base Silvertrain spring from, even when we are talking about ballads, and Waiting is pretty much a straight forward rock tune, all chunka-chunka and half naked verse and endless repetitions of the main hook. Exactly what you would expect from a decent pop rock track in fact. Truth is that I would probably have rated this track a lot higher had those little kinks in the mix not got in the way. As it is, it serves to remind me the the Serial Songwriter can indeed write a mean tune, but he really should concentrate on getting the other bits right too.

Excellent pop rock song, not helped by its mix.