Big Pig, or Jessica Smyth to her friends, has just released her latest album and Scottish Music Network was given an opportunity to review it…
’11:11’ showcases Jessica’s versatility with vocals that range from child like whispers to a throaty fullness. The vocals in every song are drowned in FX and, in parts, the reverb and delay are used to fill the mix; double tracked and spread wide in the sonic spectrum the FX do a lot of the heavy lifting throughout the album.
Funk bass is the biggest standout musically as almost every song contains some wonderful bass lines and woofer testing lows. The bass cuts through the mix but in a very smooth way; it never takes over but shouts out to the listener as a bass should…
Incidental sounds galore warble and bubble below the mix and help tie the sounds together; they are almost indistinct but grab the attention in very subtle ways. Pitch shifting trickery on the vocals combine with early sampler lo-fi sounds to give the songs a grittiness that lends itself to the overall vibe of the album.
There are a couple of stand out tracks in ‘Favourite Girl’ and ‘Decimal’ with the former treating the listener to some old school analog synth stabs and a nice bit of arpeggio running in parts of the song. It’s up tempo with yet another fine bass driving it along.
Overall the album has a chilled, Sunday morning vibe with the slower tracks but, in a few of the tracks, it demands that the listener get off their derrier and dance. The general sound of the album remains the same throughout and whether that is a good thing depends on what you are looking for in an album… Heavily effected vocals and tremendous basslines rule the roost as the 11 track album comes to the inevitable end; it’s a very short album coming in at about 30 minutes duration.
Tracklisting
4AM
Ponytail
Cynical
Favourite Girl
I Keep Losing Sleep
9-5
Decimal
Silhouette
Stay Home
One Way Ticket
Brighter Day
Review by John Brown
