This is a production which features that classic hip-hop staple, a kick-drum that’s distorted just enough to ‘fold’ slightly on itself, as if your speaker’s woofer’s bottoming out, unable to cope with the driver excursions demanded of it. But where a lot of modern productions seem to achieve this kind of sound with simple digital clipping, a glance at the waveforms suggests that we’re hearing a combination of analogue and digital processes here, and I have to say I do like the warmth of the result – the clipping doesn’t have that same hard and rather impersonal ’edge’ that you might hear on, say, a digitally flat-topped dance-pop record.

Other than that, this track also provides quite an extreme depth contrast between the punchy, upfront drum samples and the rest of the track. Yes, the snare does appear to have a dusting of some kind of very short ambience on it, and is plenty wide into the bargain, but on the whole the drums still feel clearly foregrounded in the mix. In a sense, this chimes with the 70s sensibilities of The Enchantments’ ‘Silly Love Song’, an eight-bar snippet of which forms the bedrock of the song. (Apparently, though, it’s a re-recorded facsimile, rather than a direct sample – a common means of side-stepping mechanical copyright restrictions.) There was a trend in the 70s for designing studios with extremely dead acoustics, and then adding masses of plate and chamber reverb to reinstate a lush, expansive sonic wash, and this often gave drums a characteristically tight, upfront sound – despite those reverbs, given that neither plate nor chamber reverbs usually have much of the kind of early-reflection information that most contributes to distancing sounds naturally.

But what’s also interesting here is how recessed the lead vocal is in the depth perspective, by comparison with the drums. Partly, this is a function of the fairly heavy reverb, which forms a clearly identifiable part of the vocal’s sonic character, not just a subtle blending effect. Furthermore, it sounds rather like a room reverb to me, gemerating a real sense of a physical space around the voice, and perceptually distancing it more than the delays, plates, and chambers that most other mainstream productions tend to use these days. The fact that this reverb has significant upper-spectrum energy only emphasises this effect – again, long-tail effects for chart-ballad lead vocals are often quite dull to position them behind the singer, thereby maintaining an illusion of closeness for the singer themselves despite the effect.

And, speaking of high end, the vocal timbre is quite dull-sounding too, which also pushes the vocal backwards in the image by contrast with the upper-spectrum presence of the drums. Just to give some context here, try comparing it with Huntrix 'Golden' and Sabrina Carpenter’s 'Manchild' or (perhaps more appropriately!) with Bad Bunny’s 'DtMF' or Tyler The Creator’s ‘Sticky’. For anyone labouring under the idea that there’s any such thing as a standard ‘professional vocal sound’, hopefully just those four multi-Grammy-nominated productions should lay that misconception to rest.

PS. Just as an aside, it’s ironic that Victoria Justice, who played the lead ‘pop star in the making’ role in Disney’s successful teen sitcom Victorious has now in real life seen two of her co-stars launched into the chart stratosphere instead – the other being a little-known niche artist called Arianna Grande. I have to say, though, it would be churlish to begrudge Leon Thomas his success, as he’s clearly an extremely skilled singer, especially on a technical level. His recent NPR Tiny Desk appearance was particularly impressive in terms of the accuracy of his R&B riff-blizzard. That said, while listening to The Enchantments’ original production, I did find myself reminiscing wistfully of a time when R&B songs actually had some development in their arrangements…

PPS. Also, although that NPR show features a much more conventional vocal-up-front depth perspective than the song’s studio production, I do somehow find it quite amusing that Thomas and most of his band feel like they’re still perceptually distancing themselves by virtue of their eyewear – singer, drummer, guitarist, and bass player are all rocking the indoor shades, by contrast with the keyboard player and backing vocalists who aren’t. Am I the only person who feels my gaze inadvertently drawn more towards the players offering the direct eye contact?