Music can be a great expression of the self and the feelings of the artist, but there’s a threshold after which it starts to get a little too personal. Here’s a record that approaches this threshold at a dangerous speed.
Raining Satellites is the musical project of Michael J. Sanders, a Staten Island native who’s a self-taught musician who’s been making music for nearly two decades, alone and in groups. This album finds him in a pensive and dark mood, which he translates into moody and somber, nearly minimal synth-pop, with varying levels of success.
The 7 songs that form this album are consistent and cohesive, maintaining a vibe that persists along the album’s runtime, making it sound like one lone body of the composition, which is a great feat in my humble opinion. The production is nice too. Almost all of the songs are populated with a few lines, namely a pair of synthesizers, a drum machine, and one or two lines of vocals. All of those lines are recorded and mixed well, with no vocals bullying the synths or beats fighting bass lines for attention. Song 1, Heartbreaker, features a very engaging rhythmic bass that keeps things exciting. Song 4, Modern Love Letter, starts very sparsely with singing that verges on being spoken word, before picking up in the second half, with the introduction of a solid beat. ‘Staying Up For Breakfast’ is built around a cool riff and a steady beat, it also features a chorus section with manic processed beats that get intense, in a refreshing way.
Where this album undoubtedly falters is in the vocal deliveries. Often we find Mr.Saunders struggling to find the proper register, often more we catch him going completely out of tune, and it’s those moments where the album starts to feel a little too personal, too in the moment, too tumultuous and real. Unprocessed, untreated, and raw. Some other, more experienced artists can pull this style off with great results, think Nick Cave and Tom Waits as examples. I, personally, could not shake off the feeling that this record needed more polishing and maybe a few vocal retakes, such as would not change the direct honesty of the words, but only make them easier to digest musically.