Somebody's Baby Mix Critique Cover

I'm suddenly thinking about Jennifer Jason Leigh. Really good cover - great voice - very natural and "live" sounding. Only critique is I would have liked to hear the groove accented a bit more - a bit deeper - but I'm on a groove trip right now in my own life so that's just my personal sensitivity right now -- Mix wise the two guitar tones and the synth tone are very similar - don't remember if the original was the same way or if there was more tonal variation. Did you AB this with the original mix at all? I'm wondering if you need to get a little darker with the mix -- it's a bit peppy as the song plays both light and dark lyrically - this mix is a little too happy for me. But absolutely cool cover to do man - what a great song from a by-gone era.

For starters, the musicianship is excellent. Nice job covering the parts. I've always liked the song, (and for me it's Phoebe Cates that comes to mind).

Mix-wise, the main note I would have is that the guitars are too forward in the mix. As a musician myself, the first time I listened to your version it was hard not focusing on how well you played and sang all the parts, and I thought, 'that's a pretty decent mix as is.' Then the next time through I forced myself to imagine I was hearing your version of the song for the first time on the radio without all the Jackson Browne or Fast Times memories clouding my judgement. Immediately, I was struck by how loud the guitars were. I felt like the vocals and keys are sitting right about where they need to be. I thought the snare needed to come down in volume a good bit too. The bass guitar needs to come up and be thickened up and rounded out tonally, but not necessarily any more compression. It sounds like the bass is compressed pretty aggressively (maybe too much so) already.

Then I went and listened to the original, and found that most of those observations were probably rooted in the version my subconscious wanted to hear. In the original, the vocals are the star of the show, head and shoulders above the music, and the bass is the driving force for the whole song. The snare is really quiet in the mix and the guitars only compete with the vocals for attention in a couple spots.

You're in the ballpark, there's just something about the tone or attack that takes away from the broader pulse of the song. I'm guessing you're primarily a guitar player, and as such, might play bass with a pick?

So, if you're going for a dead-ringer remix, those are some things you could think about tweaking. If you're just trying to clean up this mix, the main thing to address is the guitar volume. The pieces are all there. If you can, try listening to it as if you've never heard any other version before.

This version is the best yet.

Great job with the remix. And again, you've done a very impressive job on the performances!

IF you were looking for a way to waste another 10-15 minutes, a little volume bump to those incidental organ lines would be the only tweak I could think of.

I think you can call that one 'done'. (Very well done.)

Sounds great to me

Well done (y)