Three years after his debut Long Way Down, UK indie/pop singer-songwriter Tom Odell has already reached the point where familiarity breeds pleasure.
There are two ways this can go: engage or extricate.
If you choose the latter, then you’ll miss out on a mostly strong collection of songs that highlight 25-year-old Odell eagerly digging into early influences: he grew up listening to the likes of Elton John, Billy Joel, Randy Newman, Jeff Buckley, and Bruce Springsteen, and it’s fair to say that what’s on offer here reflects rather than builds on similarities.
Yet Odell adds a contemporary twist, and when it’s good (Sparrow, Concrete, Constellations, Wrong Crowd) it’s impressive; when it’s bad (Magnetised, which borrows too clearly from Coldplay and Florence + the Machine), it’s dismal.
