Review by Vince Leigh
Belgian-born producer Francis Groove has just released Can’t Wait, a contemporary pop track that features Miss X on vocal.
Francis is best known for his EDM production work and has just recently had a hit with I Swear, another collaborative project that featured AM-A, a fellow Euro club star.
Can’t Wait is an interesting amalgamation of styles, fusing pop, hip hop with added traces of soul and smidgens of dance. But above all, this is a pop record. The melodic hooks are there, the journal style lyric is there and the production provides all the requisite highs and lows, subtle crashes and flaring swooshes.
Everything here caters to the vocal and the beat, with the barroom piano quarter note stabbing deftly providing a vital emphasis, pushing the track along its persuasive path.
And it is quite persuasive. Miss X’s vocal performance is controlled and measured yet this seems to be a perfect fit for the sentiment of the track and for the style of sonic embellishment Francis has cooked up for it. When dissecting the melodic components of the song, the highlight is the section that follows the verses, a pleasing arrangement of notes that don’t escape the brain too quickly once you’ve been exposed to it a few times.
Another minimalistic hook follows which resolves this main hook and that provides a smooth transition into the next part of the song.
The general mood of this track is chilled expectancy, the tempo is laid-back sauntering, the tonal reading is light with streaks of impertinence and the message is suitably summarized.
What is perhaps most significant about Francis Groove’s production, and no doubt his writing too, is the adherence to this general mood, as though the music really is reflecting some inner compartmentalization of an aspect in one’s life that needs to change—and therein lies its persuasive qualities.
