If you do not own Firewater's Man on the Burning Tightrope album go to their official site here. On the top right of the main page pop up is a button that says "click here to listen to the new album." Skip ahead to track 8, "Secret."
Firewater albums have all generally been extremely well recorded. Check out this track. In addition to being a great song the mix is very interesting. It violates quite a few of my "rules" about where instruments should live in the stereo space, but everything is so well balanced it works.
As the song starts the acoustic guitar is hard left, with a strong stereo voice keeping both sides balanced. As the song kicks in, the acoustic stays hard left, accompanied by the ENTIRE DRUM KIT. The right channel gets all of the bass, and the electric guitar. The organ (for the most part) stays on the right, while strings are pretty close to hard left, with reverb trails coming in on the right.
This is the sort of thing that should get the "unlistenable in headphones" tag but I am floored by how clever use of instrument levels and EQ allows everything to sit perfectly balanced, even in headphones. I wonder why they chose to do something so bold for this ballad, unless they were consciously trying to emulate a vintage 60s Beatles mix.
Either way check it out. If you have only appreciated the band for their songs in the past take a moment to appreciate the craft. This could have easily fallen off the edge of disaster, but instead makes a good song extraordinary and memorable.
