One Headlight

  • Artist: The Wallflowers
  • Album: Bringing Down the Horse
  • Label: Interscope Records
  • Year: 1996
  • Producer: T-Bone Burnett
  • Engineer: Tom Lord Alge

Notes:

Compression
The lead vocal is compressed aggressively throughout. The snare drum also offers a classic demonstration of extracting maximum timbral detail, in part, through fast release compression.

Distortion
Note especially the vocals in each chorus, with added distortion brought about in part through extremely fast compression, and some digitally-derived hard clipping. The lead vocal gets a useful emotional lift through aggressive distortion, while the harmonies get an even stronger dose.

Echo
Just a few well-placed echoes.
The lead vocal is wholly without delay, for the entire song, until the third verse. The words “turn” and, to a lesser extent “burn,” get an almost subliminal dotted quarter-note echo.
The slide guitar solo gets a thoughtful quarter note delay treatment that comes and goes, mid-solo, filling space and adding motion. The solo track itself is panned left, first echo is panned dead center, and the second repetition is panned hard right, where it stays for the next phrase.


Sources

Back to the full Recordingography

Share