Release Date: 28 October 2022
Song Count: 12
Duration: 29 minutes, 24 seconds
Rating: 6.9/10
Description:
Song Count: 12
Duration: 29 minutes, 24 seconds
Rating: 6.9/10
Description:
Oh wow, it really has been a while since the last time we had a proper star on the front page. One of the most attention-catching alternative pop singer-songwriters of the recent decade, Tom Odell is widely known for a signature melancholy and heartfelt expression within his music, especially the ones that have broken out well into virality and the mainstream, such as his hit "Another Love" from a few years back. This album of his that we're looking at today, Best Day of My Life, marks the fifth one in his discography and follows suit on the style and mood that Odell is known to induce in his works, whilst also acting as an artistic challenge for him. Following a gimmick of only containing the sounds of played piano and him singing with nothing else added in, a limiting artistic prompt was set during the making of its contents, showing a fully new side into the musician's songwriting talents.
Short tracks rarely longer than 3 minutes in length provide a swift progression that yet manages to immerse the listener through both sonical and narrative consistency firmly set amongst them all. Odell manages to express the emotions of sadness, disorientation, numbness and deep introspection through his breezing vocals and lets them gently run parallel to the minimalistic and tranquil piano tunes that use music theory to further set the scene. Centred around the themes of depression, suicidality, heartbreak and complexities within interpersonal relationships, descriptive lyricism that then provides memorability through loose repetition draws attention to itself through the confines and nature of the work as a whole.
Staying at one aural layer throughout the entire runtime, Best Day of My Life ends up being a record for the feels that sinks into its self-constructed melancholy without lingering for longer than the material in use calls for. Odell's strengths as an artist blare through far more clearly with the stripped down, bare-bones structure of the album and the contrasting enrichment found once scraping deeper than the surface. Plenty of the tracks to blend into one another by the nature of it all, yet distinct and clear motifs setting them apart remain in play and lead to an all around qualitative experience that soothes and speaks to melancholic souls engaging in it.