please put me out of my misery

[Andrewjvt]

Regardless of the compression i think it sounds ok as a recording. Nice and clear
I love her. My favorite female artist atm.

 

[lindsayt]

Sound quality of recordings is all relative.

Play London Grammar in isolation and back to back with red DR rating recordings and you might not feel that dynamic compression is an issue.

Play them back to back with a dark green recording (especially with appropriate adjustment to the volume knob) and you may well notice that London Grammar's first album has been robbed of a certain amount of impact and the natural ability of the music to breathe (by that I mean to naturally get louder and quieter according to the instrumentation and the way it's being played).

Play London Grammar back to back with Neil Young's Peace Trail (which is almost unique in being a 2016 original release with vocals with a dark green DR rating that isn't classical or jazz).

Or for female vocals, the orignal (dark green) 1980's albums by Sade, Grace Jones, Alison Moyet, Pat Benatar.

London Grammar's first album was also an exercise in how much they could use the EMT echo plate.

 

[lindsayt]

As a female vocal performance and recording I think Lady Gaga's Joanna is a better album than If You Wait.

Where Joanna falls down is the quality of the backing track, which on too many songs makes it sound as if she's singing along to a poor quality Karaoke machine.

Such a shame, with better production - mainly from not using the compression machine - both albums could have been all time classics. The equivalent of Michael Jackson's Thriller or George Michael's Faith.