TOM ODELL - Songs from another love


Sorry to all the boys out there but, oh my goodness- this is pretty. Girls, you will know Tom Odell through such projects as the music on the Spring/Summer catwalk show of Burberry (if you're rich). For the rest of us, it will be the music behind the advert for new BBC1 dramas and also the sad music behind the bit on Dancing on Ice when someone has been kicked in the head by a blade or something. Emotional stuff indeed.


Only 21, Mr Odell seems to have had quite a lot of luck of late. Though his is undoubtedly a story fraught with cliché (growing up in Chichester, moving to Brighton, being 'discovered' by Lily Allen and then signing to Colombia, so naturally moving to Londinium), the praise is deserved.

'Another love' is the song that he is best known for, mostly because it possesses a raw pain that emanates from a place in a man's soul far older than his years and people, particularly those in the television industry, like that sort of thing. Comparisons have been made to Coldplay and Jeff Buckley and, though these are clear influences, they have been taken and moulded into something slightly more his own. It is also unsurprising that a principal idol is Elton John's as Odell's thing herein is predominantly soft piano and gutwrenching musings and a sense of melody that, though predictable, uses a formula that kicks the arse out of Ed Sheeran (and anyone that does that has my absolute seal of approval).


As Odell and his spectral backing choir cry and wail through the line 'All my tears have been used up on another love', the multi-layered power behind his songwriting is nothing short of awesome, at least for one so small and blonde. At times sounding like The Lumineers but without the country twang, and the final track demo of 'Stay tonight' possessing the same poppy swoon of early Paolo Nutini, the production is far more immense than any of his contemporaries and, by the end of the EP, you can be assured that Odell writes the soundtrack for every romcom that you are yet to see. Or perhaps an episode of Hollyoaks.

There's more to come when the first album is released in June this year.

Released 29th October, 2012.

Anna C


http://tomodell.com/