Showcasing the numerous groups that dot the landscape at Brigham Young University, Best of BYU A Cappella Club 2023: Brotherhood has a bit of everything on the tracklist, ranging from the Beatles to BTS, from Disney to Hamilton. Full of energy and strong vocals, it's an easy listen that's sure to make the casual a cappella fan or hardcore fan of BYU a cappella smile and dance along. For me, the intrigue and excitement of the tracklist was overshadowed by recurring themes that I found myself critiquing more than just enjoying the album.

One of the first major themes that I look for in an album is how the group pays attention to dynamics — are the backgrounds actively listening and engaging with the soloist, and are they helping convey the emotion of the track? With an album highlighting many groups, it's tricky to go into great detail on all of them, but the general sense that I took away from the album was there was not a lot of time or energy spent on this area. Ultralight Beam is a good example of this — the entire track starts off far too loud, not allowing Dynamite anywhere to go vocally as the track moves along. By the time that the rap starts around the three minute mark, the wall of sound from the backgrounds singing "nah"s and "ooh"s has the listener straining to hear anything being said. It's a similar story in Secret Chord's Cheers to Us, where the beautiful duet from Ethan Davis and Joy Pizorno is swallowed at times by background vocals on very open vowels that cover the words. If the backgrounds either were on more closed vowels or took their dynamic level down a couple of levels from mezzo forte to mezzo piano or even piano in the verses, that would have given the arrangement a more powerful effect.

In addition to the lack of dynamics, choices made in some of the arrangements cause tracks to sound disjointed and not as clean as they could have been. Dynamite's bass line is quite busy in the choruses, with a lot of extra syllables needing to be sung that seem unnecessary and out of step with the rest of the lower vocals. While I don't think the basses are ever "off tempo", the extra notes on the off beats give the impression that they are. Tempo wasn't paid close attention to in the bridge; the d's and n's on the "dah-nah-nah-nah-nigh" consonants are not snapped off of fast enough, causing a slight drag in that section. It's subtle, but pronounced enough to cause a bit of a double take. Then, there's the bass line and percussion in Nobody Like You from Disney's Turning Red, which attempts a more electronic feel in the bridge, but I find it to be distracting from the solo. I also find the sharp tight snare in the percussion of Hey Jude to be out of place, especially in the last minute of the track. While it's clear Familiar Ring decided to pick up the tempo of the overall track, the intensity of the percussion gets too aggressive with the increase in speed, and it simply takes over the track at the end.

The first two tracks, 1AChord's Remember This and the whole club's rendition of Brother are the highlights of the album — both of these tracks have a bit more dynamic contrast compared with the rest of the album, and the collection of soloists blends well across both works. Seeing Scott & Ryceejo as guest soloists on I See The Light was a welcome surprise, as I reviewed their 2018 release Disney Mashups, Vol. 1, and they sound fantastic on the lead duet here with Amplifyre.

Overall, this is a great project that the groups of BYU put together every year, and I think that it's something that groups at universities and colleges big and small could look into doing to help showcase their groups when auditions come around. However, to properly show how incredibly talented the members of each group truly are, there needs to be more attention dedicated to the message and musicality of each track. If everyone in the club focuses their efforts on these crucial elements in future compilations, BOBA has the potential of being something truly special every year … and not just on the campus of BYU.

In my review of BYU A Cappella Club's 2022 compilation, I wished for this compilation format to more broadly showcase the diversity and unique strengths of the featured groups. I also noted that that album was long and the amount of bloat led to a fatiguing listen. Brotherhood directly addresses both of these criticisms, and I'm happy to say it unequivocally makes improvements on both of these fronts.

The most obvious change here is the length of the album — 35 minutes instead of 55 is far easier to pace and curate. And the results showcase this — compared to 2022's compilation, the best cuts are much easier to find, and the album lowlights are fewer. The inconsistency in track quality is still definitely here like last year, but it's far more forgivable.

The second big improvement is in efforts made to highlight group identity. Amplifyre was clearly distinguished by the group's Disney covers, Dynamite by its efforts to capture songs originally reliant on heavily electronic production, and Familiar Ring by throwback '60s covers. Secret Chord and 1AChord's styles are a bit harder to directly identify, but the idiosyncrasies established elsewhere help distinguish these two groups among the crowd nonetheless. The groups picking lanes like this also allows their strengths and weaknesses to shine through a lot more, and it turns this compilation album into what it seems intended to do: give a crash course tour of BYU's a cappella scene.

The highlights of this album are also far stronger than those on 2022's Best of BYU. Remember This by 1AChord is an all-around solid cut carried by some great solos by Miranda Sanofsky, Curtis Allen, and Tavita Fewell. Gospel Truth by Amplifyre is silly and goofy, but another set of five great soloists combined with a great sense of momentum throughout allows the group to keep the experience a real fun time. Run Around Sue doubles down on how incredibly anachronistic the song choice is amongst the rest on the album, especially with how effectively Dallin Belnap sells it, and I love it (though I'm confused by the misspelling of the song title). Nobody Like U is simply a fun cut on all fronts — a great adaptation of the original, with some great original flair added (plus infectiously lively solo work from Dallin Flake, Hayden Buford, and Talmage Sanders), and a solid use of organic voices with a bit more involved production where needed.

There are definitely still weak cuts here. Cuts like Hey Jude and Satisfied struggle to justify their inclusions from an execution standpoint, and it exposes the risky song characteristics (an overdone classic and a context-heavy musical theater song) in an extra distracting way. I See the Light did not need such involved reharmonization nor aggressive bass, and the cover does not justify these choices at all. Dynamite's Dynamite is a fun track, but it attempts to capture a song originally heavily reliant on its electronic production. This a cappella cover is not bad, but it struggles under the weight of that expectation. Ultralight Beam, however, completely crumbles under this weight. The original song is so dependent on the electronic vocal effects for many of its specific melody lines, on the big gospel choir for the climax, and on very specific rap and spoken word articulation and phrasing cadence, all working together with precision. None of that is conveyed on this track.

Even with these weak points, however, Brotherhood is still a marked improvement over its predecessor. I very much enjoyed my time with this album, and would definitely say it's worth a listen. It's a worthy sampler of BYU's A Cappella Club member groups, and I hope it continues to push its consistency levels in the future while still showcasing the variety shown here.

The Best of BYU A Cappella Club albums present a rarity in the scene: multiple groups from one campus creating a compilation album together. Six of Brigham Young Unviersity's many a cappella groups are showcased on the 2023 version subtitled Brotherhood. Though the groups offer one to three songs each, some general comments and critiques can still be made across the album on the performances and the production aspects.

The sound quality of the recording, as well as groups' blend and tone quality, is strikingly strong. All of the ensembles sound fantastic and sing with an energy that is infectious, something I wouldn't have expected given how many different groups sing on the release. The first chords of Remember This grab your attention and the group, 1AChord, holds it with their intensity and stellar sound. Secret Chord delivers an intriguing cover of Satisfied from the musical Hamilton, featuring the charismatic Bianca Pizorno who is equally adept at the singing and rap portions of the solo. A.J. Tower arranges the background vocals especially well to enhance the song and varies what is asked of them, which keeps the listener engaged, though there were some strange choices of which phrases or sections of the original song were cut to condense the chart.

However, I have a (somewhat facetious) question: is there a deficit of dynamics in Provo? Because this album seriously lacks quiet singing and de/crescendos. Nearly every song is presented at the same loudness level for the entire track. Even when voices drop out and you would expect the volume levels to decrease naturally, the singing remains stubbornly forte. Only on Satisifed and Brother do the groups attempt to introduce some dynamic contrast, but even those tracks could have gone much further.

This issue goes beyond music direction and arranging: all of the various production teams on the album chose to keep the levels stagnant. For example, the background vocals overpower and obscure the soloists on Run Around Sue and on several portions of Ultralight Beam. The rap portion of the latter track sounds like when the soloist has a microphone issue at a live show because we should not be hearing the treble parts so clearly.

To pile on the production even more, Amplifyre's arranger-producer Talmage Sanders covers up the group's good singing with the distracting bass effects on Nobody Like U and the muffling filter on I See the Light. The latter track unfortunately stands out from the others on the album for its rigidity and almost mechanical singing. Perhaps the mellifluous guest soloists Scott & Ryceejo recorded separately and the group sang on a click track afterwards? But that conjecture still does not excuse making the group sound unfavorably like automatrons from a Disney theme park ride.

The 2023 BOBAC compliation is somehow unified in its strengths and weaknesses, even with multiple ensembles and production teams working on the album. Once the dynamic shortage has been solved, I look forward to hearing the next iteration of this almost-annual tradition.