Pidgeman - Wasting Time

Hear The Track Here

Third time around for MP3 Unsigned's Pidgeman, a singer/songwriter from the UK. The first track I reviewed - Misery Loves Company (November 2007) - showed that Pidgeman knows what he's doing in terms of performance and songwriting style and Can't Stop Thinking About You (January 2008) only confirmed that impression. Where things fell down in both tracks was in the final presentation, as is often the case. We, all of us, struggle with the equipment restrictions we have, and often come up with some ingenious workarounds, but we have what we have and that's all there is to it. So, a certain amount of audio loss is inevitable and it's a good job that most people don't even hear that but hey, I certainly do. That's why I have audio geek stencilled on my heart.

And 'a pain' stencilled on my butt.

Pidgeman's music does appeal to me though, in many ways. He is a very capable musician - he plays everything you hear - and his brand of rock does suit me well. Any comments I have made about him in the past are usually small matters. The same wouldn't be true if I were judging the first version of this (the one I downloaded for review) but before I finished the review I noticed that there was a new version with Andy Foyston (aka AndyF) supplying orchestration, which helps matters enormously. The difference between the verses and the chorus in the original were jarring and the vocals were sloppy, at best. Craig (aka Pidgeman) has a good voice but on both mixes he tends to use a kind of 'Elvis' reverb that just muffles the vocal.

IMHO, I don't think this is anything like as strong a song as Can't Stop Thinking About You, but there again I have a marked aversion to pop ballads. I know it's classified as R&B (and it would make a decent R&B song) but in this version it is ashamedly weepy pop which is definitely not my thing at all. The vocal pitch problems that often dog this musicians work, are really noticeable in both versions of this track and that's a shame. Having said that, having peiced a few vocals together out of endless takes, I know just how frustrating that can be. Still nonetheless, it does blunt the impact of this song a lot. IMHO a clearer, sharper, deeper mix and a LOT more attention to getting those vocals right would scrub this track up a treat.

As it is right now, it still feels mainly unfinished.