Tom Odell - Long Way Down

The ingredients are all there for the typical snooty backlash: a Brit's Critics Choice award, a debut #1 album and a heaving similarity in sound to the country's favourite hate figures, Coldplay. But when NME dropped a 0/10 review and others soon followed, I couldn't help but feel a little bit sad for Odell. I hadn't heard anything of his by this point - or rather I thought I hadn't, because Can't Pretend was rather determinedly being thrown at my face by TV trailers - but there's an element of cruelty about tearing apart new acts before they've really started. Unless they're Ed Sheeran, in which case: be my guest.

"I find that I write much better songs when I'm being honest, and writing about things that happen to me"

Ah. How novel. Let's dive in.
 

From the start we're surrounded with heart-swelling piano melodies and Odell's croaky, soaring vocals on 'Grow Old With Me'. It's undoubtedly lovely, but a pretty obvious sentiment. 'Hold Me' crashes in, next, with a hellishly painful "live" intro (5 points for authenticity!!!) and a resounding feel of throwing every instrument available in the studio at the track in the vague hope of something irreverent and exciting. Repetitive lyrics restrict it from being anything of the sort. There's then the obvious highlight of the record: taken from his 2012 Songs From Another Love EP, 'Another Love' is a pretty beautiful piano melody (although it's worth observing it's been incredibly polished since the EP) and a sombre, earnest performance from Odell.

Sadly, the rest of the record is a beige melting pot of Coldplay, Keane and Mumford and Sons. In 'Sense' you'd be quite happily forgiven for thinking you'd put on Parachutes by mistake (although that's not a bad album to replicate), whilst 'I Know' is an inanely Keanish, sunny backdrop for Odell to get romantic over ("I'll sing you a song that I think you'll like" - not this time, Tom). And the groaning, folkish yearning of the Mumfords is present on first single 'Can't Pretend', a shuffling and moody track with no real pay-off moment.

It's odd, really, that the album's strongest attempts at bar-room stompers and loud, orchestral-pop come off as the most boring and immobilising listens. 'Till I Lost' takes solace in memories of "wandering around with you/ just wandering town with you" and desperately wants them back, which is sweet, I guess. 'Supposed to Be' is similarly pessimistic in its outlook, and given another layer of Coldplay in its sound, but is drained of their lyricism. Similarly, the title track meanders along with no sense of anticipation or showmanship, before 'Sirens' closes everything with a melody that's sort-of merged together The Fray, Hoobastank and OneRepublic.

The production is all very glossy and effective in putting across a kind of safe, Jools Holland atmosphere for us to snuggle up to - and to be fair the tracks are listenable in a "well at least I'm not dying" way - but the overall feeling left by this album is similar to that of sitting through 20 adverts back-to-back where a cute, throaty young thing warbles their way through a classic song. It's tedious, unoriginal and, frankly, worthless. There's also something terribly presumptuous about a debut album being packaged with a "deluxe edition", though this is more his label's - and its quest to wring every drop of innovation from music - fault.

Rating: 2.5/10
Highlights: Another Love; Grow Old With Me; Sense
Avoid: I Know; Till I Lost; Hold Me; Sirens; Long Way Down

Artwork Watch: There's something terribly frightening about the dullness with which artists debut with albums that feature their own faces.
For fans of: Mumford + Sons; Patrick Wolf; Ellie Goulding
Up next: Smith Westerns