Sounds nice, but I notice you are doing a lot of covers with light singing, can you try something full voice? You're nearly in a half voice here, I know you were going for that in the beekeeper cover but I hear you adding a bit more volume here but it's not much more. I still haven't heard you go full on the sound yet.

I don't hear you pressing at all, I hear you letting too much air through and getting a loose and relaxed cord closure, it's causing you to lose any kind of "spark" in your tone…you're not bringing out your full tonal character.

Here are some examples of the sound the voice takes on when you get into your medium loud volume more,the voice where the voice operates the most efficiently and comes out the most clearly. Of course they are varying the volume but they are sitting around the voice where the voice is fully engaged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJWM5FmZyqU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxmk-z5wocg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqkwykA4iFw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNOnyIXy8Mg

you always want to be able to return to this volume and not get STUCK in a light way of singing. All the best lighter singers can bring this color out in their voices too. It comes out a lot in that middle high range between the C4-C5 when they really go for it, but are still singing clean. I haven't heard you go there with your voice and it's a very important ability to have in your artistic palate as well as important to center the voice technically. You want that same clarity in your low range too and that will help you with your low notes here, the only difference is that at lower pitches it comes in quieter in volume and the resonance doesn't sing out quite as much, but it will maintain clarity.

So I think the next thing for you to study is applying what you are doing to a louder volume that will really open up your full voice.

Okay so as for not being able to back off the "LAH" stuff, first of all you need to make sure you're getting that loud sound without any problems (otherwise you CANT back off) and then backing off it correctly is yet another skill on top of that. It IS fucking difficult as shit to do it perfectly (this is why messa di voce exercises are so brutal), but you should seek to achieve that freedom to go from soft to loud and back at least up to the lower passaggio area. If there's an inability to back off though, it's not strong engagement of chest voice that's at fault, it's constriction coupled with it. When singing without constriction you'll be able to go as loud as you can and still smoothly thin out to as soft as you can after you've gone loud...and then go loud AGAIN...and then go soft etc all on the same note on any note of your range

About the neighbors thing - I understand this is a real concern for a lot of people but it's really not good for the voice to completely adapt by just deciding to practice quieter a lot. I mean if it's what your voice needs, sure, but I don't hear that to be the case for you. You should still try to practice in the same way you would if noise weren't an issue...working on all the dynamics your voice can create. Even if it means spending some time singing into a pillow or some other absorbent material just to be able to spend some time fully engaging the voice, or perhaps heading out to the car to do your louder practice, or asking your neighbors when they are out of the house and making use of that time. Otherwise you can imbalance the voice by spending too much time on the thinner stuff. Based on your clip in the car it seems you haven't lost much of that ability to fully engage the voice, so you are relatively safe, but too much light practice can make you almost "forget" that feeling if you're not careful to revisit it regularly. Plus there are some problems with it that could be easily worked out if you were to spent more practice time in your full volume. One thing you are doing is spreading too much on the sound in the wrong way which is part of why the highest notes are unstable. Try practicing loud but without letting the lips widen horizontally from a neutral position, just open the mouth vertically only. You can use your hands on your face to squish your lips inwards from the sides to help get used to the position and then take them off and try to prevent that spreading without the hands as a crutch.

I hadn't heard of Jack Garratt before, he sounds nice.

On the first clip...okay you're CLOSE, but you can still lean a bit more when you want to go for louder moments, and you should except a bit of brightness to enter the tone to replace the airiness. Pay attention to how Jack does it. When he goes loud, the airiness is gone and he has a bit of "metal" in the tone, that's what you want. But if you never get to a certain amount of intensity that metal won't really enter into the voice because the closure will not be strong enough. Another byproduct of stronger closure is an added depth in the sound, and not like a forced of fake kind of depth but truly this feeling of like your voice digging deeper down into your body and it has a particular sound to it, an undeniable kind of depth that makes your body vibrate, not an artificial dopey low larynx kind of depth. Of course for your voice since you're a tenor it won't be SUPER deep, just deeper than you may be used to.

By the way another thing I'm noticing with your light singing is that I don't hear a natural vibrato coming out of you, instead it's more of this kind of airy "shiver" thing. That's nice an as effect, but when practicing technique, try to get the pitch fluctuating, not just the volume. I notice you get this a little more in the change is gonna come clip because you are using your voice at its more natural volume! Same thing happens for me. I need good cord closure in order to do it, and what I'm hearing with your light singing is that your cord closure is too relaxed as evidenced by the vibrato not coming in correctly. It's certainly fine to use more relaxed closure like that, but it's just not the way you want to sing all the time. If you were to, you'd probably fatigue your voice quite quickly from too much air flow.

As for let's get it on...same as with change is gonna come, in both cases I'm not hearing underdeveloped head or overdeveloped chest, a lot of the registration you are doing there is fine, you're in your full voice and mixing toward the top notes in the right area. The main problem I hear in lets get it on was just the phrasing (which you have since improved tremendously on these new covers, nice work), and not using the voice as efficiently and flexibly as you probably can now. But when you go up to a Bb4 it should still have that intensity you got in the let's get it on cover if you are singing in a medium loud volume. It will just have more head resonance, making it sound more free and less tight. Same with the Change is gonna come cover, you are in the ballpark intensity wise for if you were to sing in the center of your voice where the closure is full and the voice operates the most efficiently. You just need to make some tone and resonant adjustments so that you can be stable and flexible up there.

I guess what I'm basically trying to say is that those louder clips are your natural voice, they are NOT too heavy or chesty, they just need to be refined some. If you can give the listener some moments of that kind of volume even in your lighter interpretations, where musically appropriate, it will really help add dynamic interest. When you sing lighter you have a tendency to only hang around between light to BARELY medium volume...you are varying the volume nicely, but it doesn't really have a strong effect because you're never going loud enough to where you can hear that "metal" or "ring" of the voice start to kick in. You need to go medium loud to get that. It will really benefit you artistically to add some moments going up to that dynamic in your softer arrangements if at all possible, it will give more life to your singing. Some songs won't need it, like I think that beekeeper cover sounded fine just sung all light, but for Weathered and Stable Song, you can absolutely lean in more than you did at times especially since the songs are slowly and give you a lot of space to vary dynamics. Just be sure that when you lean in you don't spread the sound as I was talking about. Preventing the lips from spreading horizontally will help prevent the sound from getting too jarringly bright as you add some moments of louder volume...it will still pick up some brightness from more full closure kicking in but you want to keep the overall vowel tone nice and mellow.

Sick video! here's really taking full control of his musical vision, love it!

Yea what I'm trying to explain to you is definitely tricky! Maybe have a listen to how I've been singing dynamically lately...there are a lot of things with this I need to improve here (I recorded this a few months ago) but what I do believe I got right is the dynamic spectrum I was taking up. Notice I go all the way from soft singing to loud singing within a short little song and I'm using a mixture of clear moments and airy moments.
https://app.box.com/s/z17hd2uq1nhyjqs73ml2wegk02k2n2gm

For a lighter song I feel you can still use that much contrast, it will just go more soft at its softest and not as loud at its loudest. For an airier kind of song, again, contrast of more and less airy but you'll just use a clear tone a bit less.

I just think often you are not really bringing out enough variety in your voice in terms of having some airy moments and some moments of full closure and taking that airiness out...it's like all slightly airy or all full closure. You seem to just choose one or the other for any particular song, but I think the best singers use both in practically any song. Jack Garratt certainly does. There's a really magic in using both colors. You don't even have to go loud to take out the air.

Pay attention to how this guy implements what I'm talking about - he's a lighter voice and also trying to go for a lighter feel, but notice the variety of more or less airiness and some moments just singing clean and clean...AS WELL as variety of dynamics...even though he's in a lighter vibe he makes the full use of soft to medium loud dynamics in pretty much every song he sings. He can also go soft AND clear. (loud and airy is no good as you hopefully know haha)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4-c_1wZqas

Think of soft to loud as a spectrum and experiment with using all of it in a song's interpretation (within artistic reason given the dynamic range the song calls for), and the same goes for the spectrum of very airy to full closure. You can indeed get a lot of colors out of your voice, but I guess what I mean is that you should try to use more of those colors within the same song and not feel like you have to get stuck in one mode of singing.

Let me know if this is clearing things up or if we're just chasing our tails trying to communicate with each other. Text is definitely a weird way to communicate singing, I personally always understood things better by hearing them demonstrated.

I can relate to you with tolerating not so great singers. But most great singers I talk to really can't, so I think it's just something you will find as you develop and I notice I've been heading slightly in that direction myself. The best singers end up developing a really strong empathy for other singers to the point where bad singing can give them physical discomfort! That's really the reason why some people have so much hatred for bad singing.

Thanks for the kind words on the demo Slow Start. I feel like I am just getting started on truly becoming a SINGER, not just a guy who hits pitches, and I never realized before how much I was lacking that stylistic aspect.