One of the things I love about the age of digital music is just how easy it is to find new music. Not that it was necessarily difficult five, ten, twenty years ago, but these days it takes mere seconds to go down what I\u2019ve labeled a \u201cRelated Artist Rathole.\u201d There\u2019s a great big musical world waiting to be discovered, and the only constraint is essentially your time<\/p>\n
Long Way Down <\/i>was released this past summer, and marks the first full-length studio recording for Tom Odell, whose previous recording history consisted of an EP titled Songs From Another Love <\/i>(yeesh). Being a British singer\/songwriter, as well as a piano player, Odell wears his major influences on his sleeve *cough Sir Elton cough,* but cannot even come close to reaching those heights.<\/p>\n
The production is definitely pleasant enough throughout Long Way Down, <\/i>but <\/i>Odell has quite a long way to go in both aspects of being a singer\/songwriter. In Odell\u2019s defense, he is 22 and sometimes these things take time. There\u2019s a certain image that he attempts to project on Long Way Down, <\/i>but unfortunately no one is buying it. The world-weary, Coldplay-esque vocals don\u2019t go very far, and in fact become quite distracting as the record goes on. It\u2019s a halting, half-singing method of vocal delivery that keeps Odell from being able to effectively say what he wants to.<\/p>\n
That, of course, is mere window dressing to the main problem: the songs just are no good. After giving this record multiple listens, there was not a single track that I found myself humming randomly four days later, or a tune that just wouldn\u2019t leave my head for hours after hearing it. Sure, some albums take a while to grow into something special, but that isn\u2019t the case here with Long Way Down<\/i>. It\u2019s ponderous song after ponderous song; each is cut from the same cloth and that means each is inherently boring.<\/p>\n
I will highlight the best work on the record, which comes towards the end: \u201cI Think It\u2019s Going To Rain Today.\u201d Odell\u2019s voice is not well suited for gospel whatsoever, but the song itself has a strong gospel tinge, which gets even further highlighted with a few gentle, background flourishes that were very welcome. It was the only song to keep my interest from start to finish, and I\u2019d love to see Odell try and bottle the magic contained therein.<\/p>\n
The \u201cRelated Artist Rathole\u201d is exciting, it promises something new, something that you may have never heard of previously, and were never going to otherwise. Of course, the problem is if what you find on the other side is actually worth<\/i> your time. There\u2019s always something to take away from an album or a song, but there are occasions when one has to really dig deep to find anything<\/i> worth discussing. There were certainly things that Long Way Down<\/i> had going for it, but when it comes down to it you just walk away completely unenthused about the musical experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9275],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-43408","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-odell","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43408"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}