Cry No More - andy casson

[AndyR]

Wow, that sounds good.

I hear what you're saying about "IMHO it is still missing something", but I also agree with other folks saying "it's enough"...

I think what you might be feeling is "well, it's almost REALLY good, but when I listen to it it just doesn't seem to stand out like it should..."

Is that the case? If yes... read on

I don't think you need to add anything like new verses or middle 8, it's all there. Instead consider removing some stuff in the arrangement. That gorgeous acoustic part, when it runs all the way through is possibly "levelling" the arrangement rather than tying it together - mebbe explore dropping it from verse 2? (I'd want to bring it back later cos it's too good to miss out on!)

But what I think you really need is the chorus standing out more... a lot more.

On first listen I was left with a feeling of "nice, but where's the chorus?"... I knew there had been a chorus, so I went back and listened again, expecting to find it wasn't very strong chorus... But it is!!

I don't know how to do this, but I think you could ram the chorus home a bit more... That would give the whole track the "high point" it's kind of missing.

For example, I'd experiment with doing something drastic like pushing the vocals up and bringing the band down during the chorus (maybe not the whole band, I dunno, maybe bass and drums stay up, but let the vocals replace the rest of it in the overall volume/mix - experiment with it). It sounds counter-intuitive, but my thinking behind the experiment would be as follows - The hook on the vocal in the chorus is "it", we already know the band is rocking, so if the band got ducked a bit and the chorus vocals pushed in our faces, we'd probably get the "rock" of the chorus with out it being there so much. I'd give this a go to see how it grabbed me, if it didn't start sounding interesting immediately, I'd then start looking for something else...

But my gut feeling is that the thing you're missing is a bright enough spotlight on "But don't you cry no more today....". I don't think you need to record anything else, just present it to us slightly differently.

Is that any help?