Smiling – Brei Carter (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

All too often you hear a song and it sounds like the vocals and the tune are two different components, the former just thrown on top of the latter with little in common save for a common melody. It is great, therefore, to come across a song where the vocal delivery sits right in amongst the music. I’m not talking about production techniques here, I mean where they complement each other so well that you couldn’t imagine either existing separately.

Smiling is the sound of Brei Carter showing us that not only is a great song about having something worthwhile to say and then delivering it with no small amount of vocal skill, it is about placing that voice in the song so that it blends around the instruments, weaves its way around and about so that it almost becomes another instrument one that is gracious enough to allow its fellows to have their own moments in the spotlight too.

It’s a deft and delicate song at times, leaning on gospel, blues, rock and R&B styles but ultimately fashioning its own sound somewhere between all of those genres. But more that that it is a master class in sharing the limelight. If everyone sounds good then how can the end result not be great?