Tom Odell - Another Love
Listen closely people, this is how you make a song APPEAR to be good.
Now the thing that brought my attention to this album is that NME slammed it with a 0/10 review which would indicate that it has no redeeming features, AT ALL. So I got my hands on it and gave it a listen, keeping in mind the criticisms that the NME review had, saying the album did nothing original and took elements from all the industry's most boring indie artists of the time and put it into this album. What was my verdict? Well...
There's things this album does right. The album's production and song structure are pretty stellar - it's got a big stadium vibe and the addition of piano puts it a little bit apart from similar bands in the genre - but the review was right. This does sound like an amalgamation of Mumford and Sons/Florence and the Machine.
However, the album shits me. The first thing that threw me off about the album is that it kept falling flat lyrically. Odell would be setting up the verses to what should have been wrapped with brilliant metaphors, but those metaphors never came. Matter of fact he'd do a disservice to his songs by setting up some brilliant piano numbers but then having really, really, incredibly, awfully, terribly shallow pop lyrics, constant moans in the backing vocals and repetition of themes and song structure. It's very well constructed, but just annoying to have to listen to because of the repetition and the overall cheesiness. It kind of shits me in the same way that Imagine Dragons do because it feels like I'm listening to a giant cliche.
Alright, I'm cutting it off here. I'm getting a little bit annoyed at how something that has such good production could still wind up being repetitive and shallow. I mean not to say it's a bad album, if you're into that channel V bullcrap, this album is for you... But I've had my stint of listening to piano heavy albums (or at least tracks) and the piano is not an instrument you take lightly, or pair up with a complete lack of dynamic or meaningful lyrics.
Fuck man. I mean that NME guy is a tool because this is at least a 5+ for production alone, but after two listens in I'm getting angry at the album.
No comments:
Post a Comment