Pentaholicism

While browsing for videos for my post about Vocal Sampling the other day I came across another A Capella Group. 

They are a five-piece group called Pentatonix. I started watching their videos and was soon hooked. I was struck by not just the purity of their tone, the blend of their voices and accuracy of their intonation, but their versatility.

The core of the group are three school friends, Mitch, Scott and Kirsten from Arlington, Texas. They came to fame after recruiting Avi as a bass voice and Kevin, a beatboxer and entering and winning the NBC Competition "The Sing-off" in 2011. As described here, "... they followed the appearance with a string of Top Ten albums, multiple Grammy Awards, and international chart success. In addition to their popular covers and original songs -- they charted with both Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and their own "Can't Sleep Love" -- some of the quintet's biggest hits have come with holiday [i.e. Christmas] standards. "

It is their covers of classics and dance music that I was most impressed by, Here are a couple of my favourites....

Firstly a straight a capella rendition of the Elvis classic "Can't help falling in love".

Gorgeous harmonies. Mitch has an amazing voice. Kirsten is pretty good too, I think, but you need to listen to other tracks she features in to hear that.

By way of a complete contrast, here is their Grammy award winning medley of Daft Punk songs.

Entertaining make-up too, especially Kirsten's.

Some of their fans claim that their covers are often better than the originals. Here's their cover of Tears for Fears' Mad World.

 

Rather more expressive than the original, I think. Compare it for yourself with this...

And this is their acclaimed cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Finally, here's one for my pop music quiz guru friends. Don't look at the comments to see the answers until you've tried. How many 90's dance hits can you identify in this?

Oh, and the title of the post? Pentatonix fans are known as Pentaholics. I think I may have caught the disease!