There's a line on Here I Am, one of the songs on Tom Odell's second album Wrong Crowd, which sets a tone for the entire record.
“I imagined America” is the line in question, signifying that the Chichester-born singer-songwriter is yet another whose attention has veered westwards over the years.
Odell’s imagined America is full of big sky and big landscapes.
“That line and the whole album is very much inspired by a lot of American cinema, especially Terrence Malick,” he says.
"When I think of America, I think of Badlands and Days of Heaven, those scenes with big fields rippling in the wind. America means freedom to me. A lot of the songs are stuck in this catastrophic, concrete place which I'm trying to get out of, and yearning for nature."
Many of the songs were written in those very same concrete places which Odell was seeking to escape. After the huge success of his debut album Long Way Down, Odell headed to New York and Los Angeles to clear his head and write.
Yearning for more nature
“To be honest, it’s because I wrote all these songs in cities that there’s this yearning for a bit more nature throughout the album,” Odell says. “When I was in New York, I was in the heart of Manhattan. When I’m in London, I’m surrounded by buildings. Cities definitely inspired the album because it became about escapism.”
When Odell things about escape, he thinks about nature. Again and again, you'll find references on Wrong Crowd to elements of the great outdoors such as on Sparrow and Concrete. So is Odell working the same ecology seam as fellow Chichester native Anohni did on her recent album Hopelessness?
“I don’t think my album is an environmental album,” says Odell. “I don’t want to sound pretentious or overly profound here and I do tend to overthink things, but as I’ve got older, the most comforting thing I find in my surroundings and existence is not drink or drugs or religion.
“Instead, I find that the deep unanswered questions and the meaningfulness of our lives is in nature. There’s no difference between me and the tree I’m staring at right now. We’re all part of the same soil. When you die, you become a part of the ocean and the water goes to the cloud and rain falls down into the soil and up grows a flower.
‘Totally pathetic’
“Man always denies he’s a part of nature yet he’s destroying it. I know it sounds totally pathetic in a way, but I find I’m at most peace when I’m sitting there with birds singing around me or sitting by the ocean.
“It seems to alleviate a lot of my anxiety and answer questions that no one else can articulate. That’s my escape.”
More of the yearning for escape on the new album has to do with getting back to a semblance of normality after the 18-month whirlwind which went with Long Way Down.
Odell’s debut brought huge sales, accolades (the Brits Critics’ Choice Award, an Ivor Novello Award – see panel) and a tour which went on and on and on.
Distractions
What Odell wanted to do was get away from distractions and stimulations of what he calls the “circus” which surrounds a working artist.
“I spent so much time touring the first album and so much time being over stimulated and being around so many people. It’s such a circus when you tour. You wake up every day and it’s constant distraction, from getting in a taxi to go to the airport to getting on the plane to getting off to doing the interview and then the soundcheck and then the gig. Your days are endlessly filled with activities and stimulation.
“When you stop, there’s always a feeling that you want the party to go on but after a month, I was settled back into the way I was before the first album came out. I started doing normal stuff like reading more and watching films and meeting people in a bar. I don’t mean chatting someone up, but having conversations with someone which aren’t about music.”
When he wasn’t catching up with people, he was trying to be an anonymous observer.
“I really think being a songwriter is about being an outsider,” he believes. “You have to be nomadic and not belong to any group. It’s about looking through the frosty glass into a bar from the street. It’s about being observational.
“A great way of countering that desire to party was to go somewhere on my own because I knew I couldn’t continue the way I was on tour. It helps me to write songs if I’m in a place which I don’t know very well or where I don’t know many people. I have to find my own stimulation and that’s important because it gives me time to think and write. It allows more thoughts and observations to happen. Being a tourist is always cool and I always write more when there’s that discomfort and nervous energy.”
Publicity
It also helped that he wasn’t in the glare of the cameras. Odell has previously expressed unease with the publicity aspects of his job as a pop tsar (“it isn’t healthy, being in front of cameras, there’s no depth to it”) so what’s his take on the promo machine now as he prepared to embrace it again?
"Ultimately, it's important to keep perspective in this job," he says. "You have to get out there to do the shows and I love doing shows and playing music. I'm not naive to the fact that it doesn't get handed to you on a plate and those opportunities that come along are hard earned – like I'm in Los Angeles today to appear on The Late Late Show with James Corden and that's great – but it is important to have a balance.
“I wouldn’t say I was the most comfortable person when it comes to showbusiness. I don’t love it. Of all the things I do, I find it the most shallow. But it’s a necessary task and in order to be able to tour and to play piano all day, you have to get people to hear your new music and that’s the showbusiness side.”
