Doug Ferony has quite the distinctive style of play when he steps into the recording studio to do his thing, and while it can be said that he borrows a lot from the Rat Pack crooners who once dominated the vocal pop genre like no one else ever could, there’s something intentionally contemporary and smooth about his music that can never be referred to as retro in nature.
URL: www.dougferony.com/
Take for instance his new single, a cover of the fabled Christmas anthem “Jingle Bells;” rather than sticking us with a straight-up recreation of what Frank or Dean might have done with this song, he gets a lot jazzier with the beats than he has to and winds up giving us something downright swinging where we’re expecting it the least. The old-fashioned nightclub vibe is very present in this performance, but make no mistakes about it – Ferony wants us here, in this moment, enjoying everything he has to share between two speakers. His is a very respectable form of making a throwback to the classics, and he makes it all the harder to reject an iconic Christmas tune in “Jingle Bells” this December.
Swagger plays a big part in why this singer and songwriter tends to sound as commanding as he does from one performance to the next, and it’s from this perspective that Ferony’s latest single is really no different from the others he’s released in this long and storied career of his. The rhythm subtly influences the cadence of the verses, but never does it sound like my man is being led by the band – quite the opposite indeed.
When he’s confident in a harmony or even a hook, this is an artist who isn’t going to be shy about showing it, and whether you’re new to his work or have been waiting to hear him take on something like “Jingle Bells” for a long time now, I think you’re going to step away from this track feeling pretty impressed by what you’ve just listened to. The song was mixed to feel like it was taken from a raw live performance rather than meticulously processed from behind the board in a pro studio, and it makes me pretty curious about seeing this player take the stage after so many years of keeping up with his output.
Jingle Bells
Listen to Jingle Bells on Spotify. Doug Ferony · Song · 2007.
Christmas music is a beast of a seasonal pop genre, and for the most part, it takes an exceptionally special talent to make its most familiar songs sound even remotely intriguing when covering the hardest compositions to cover in the world. Doug Ferony is the right man for the job in my opinion, and not because of his honey-sweet lead vocal exclusively; he’s not afraid to try something a little more challenging than what most of his rivals are prepared to do in or outside of a recording space, and in “Jingle Bells,” he gives us his trademark sense of adventure beside one of the more consistent and levelheaded takes of this timeless track I’ve listened to in the last couple of years.
Clay Burton