Heavy Alibi wrote:Thoughts on "Spiritual Machines Acoustic Live"? I love the ethereal feel, the atmosphere of the music, the production of the instrumental track... but I gotta say Raine's frankly shoddy vocal work almost ruins the songs for me. Maybe I'm being harsh, but it feels like he's either not trying or has just lost that spark. He's lost a lot of the natural flow in his singing voice, it sounds so awkwardly staccato. I'm assuming he picked this up from doing spoken-word. And except for a few select moments, he also seems afraid to embrace the falsetto, an obstacle I thought he was past by now. But it isn't the falsetto I need - his Gravity voice would also sound great on this.
It used to be the opposite, his original voice MADE these songs! Especially on SM, so it's really apparent when it's not up to snuff performing the songs on SM.
You know I have been thinking about this for a while now and I want to comment on it. I know that this has been a heated topic in the past and I want to emphasize that I want this analysis to be taken in the most respectful way that it possibly can with regards to Raine and OLP.
I have tried singing the way Raine did back in Clumsy-SM era using my throat to reach upper registers that allows a very seamless transition between falsetto and the normal voice. I can get most of the way through Automatic Flowers before I start hacking up my lungs. Now, obviously Raine is a million times better singer than I will ever be, but that style of singing has got to take a toll over time even on somebody like him. I mean imagine 3-4 20+ song concerts each week plus intensive recording sessions where you are singing for hours each day when you are not touring. Also, I just don't think that there is any type of "proper vocal technique" for that style of singing. It's just going turn your throat into sand paper eventually. Eventually your voice is just not going to be able to sustain the same sharp sound that it once had and it will probably start to hurt a lot when making yourself sing that way.
This is probably mainly what happened to Raine. I remember hearing him complaining after singing Life in 2001 how badly his throat hurt during concerts. My guess is that he probably saw a doctor after the SM era and was told that his voice was going to naturally decline from that point on. This might have been part of why OLP had such a significant vocal style-shift in Gravity that focused on a more natural singing style. The vocal style change probably helped to slow down the damage and gave us a really normal, mature-sounding OLP during Gravity, Live and HIPT where the older songs could still be sung without too much difficulty. Burn Burn and onward, though, we are probably at a point where the damage started to become more substantial. I do not believe that Raine's singing is the result of laziness, any kind of lasting influence from Bob or even his spoken-word solo work: it's probably just the style of singing that he needs to use to feel comfortable nowadays.
And I am not criticizing the band or OLP with this analysis. Most heavy rock bands do have this problem as they age. I mean, even Rod Stewart who's not even heavy rock cannot sing anywhere nearly the way he did in his younger years. You can probably attribute this to improper vocal techniques but the fact is that unless you have Elton John's voice, "proper vocal techniques" alone gets you a minimum wage job with a singing gig at your local bar. You need some other angle to make you unique to stand-out in that industry. Raine's extremely unique voice gave us Clumsy which gave the band the popularity that was needed for many of us to come to know OLP. I am grateful to have those incredible albums and will always cherish them. I also still enjoy listening to OLP's performances today because it takes me back to those amazing days and I still want to hear what the band has to share with us in their music.