Intimate and yet symphonic: The singer/songwriter finds the second level in the depths.
Things can go terribly wrong when singers/songwriters decide to deliberately make new songs sound “unproduced”. As if the clatter and clatter and hiss were able to give the pieces a depth. BLACK FRIDAY is Tom Odell’s album in this category.
The fact that it works is due to two things. Firstly, his songs, which never sound sensational, but always good enough not to drift into insignificance. The second reason for BLACK FRIDAY’s class has to do with Odell’s decision to give the sparingly and casually recorded songs a second level.
The first piece “Answer Phone,” for example, begins as intimately as Eliott Smith’s music, before unobtrusive and playful sounding strings come into play after a minute. The small orchestra also shapes many of the other songs. The musicians don’t just play along, they change the timbre of the songs, which in the best moments is reminiscent of the arrangements that Joe Boyd wrote for Nick Drake’s BRYTER LAYTER in 1970.