Well, I do believe that what we have here is a failure to communicate....
There are clearly valid criticisms which can be made about the original draft. The client's actual stated objections, however, are complete bollocks IMO.
The client has clearly gone for a vibe known around here as "extreme cheese". You could probably use music like this to force Jason Brian Merrill to confess to every murder ever committed, but I kinda like it. The client might prefer the
Super Morrisey Bros version of This Charming Man to the original, and he'd be dead wrong; he might also prefer a low-fi version of the work in hand, and he'd have a point. He might come to increasingly dislike the mix the more polished it becomes. A compromise might be possible....
However, all of this is academic at the moment. The client hasn't even really
heard the mix until the client has heard the mix with vocals, on a variety of different systems, including at least one
good one. And neither had you.
The client's original mix is crap, by the way.