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Jul 30, 2013Long Way Down has just enough flaws to show that Odell has room to grow and progress. If you listen to one pop album this year, this is a pretty good bet.
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Jun 20, 2013There's also something a little too contained, cling-filmed and... Keane-ey about it's measured percussion and guitar swells. Which leaves you feeling that although this is a very good record by a very talented young artist, it's probably not a patch on catching him live.
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MojoJun 18, 2013Stripped back to vocals, drums and piano not a million miles from Nick Cave's Boatman's Call, of 10 tracks, not one's a duffer. [May 2013, p.87]
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Jun 18, 2013The most impressive thing about Long Way Down is how, despite being an album based on a simple, almost naïve set of concepts--being in love, falling out of love, the raw emotion of being young and not understanding the world yet--it sounds accomplished well beyond Odell’s years.
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Jun 28, 2013For Long Way Down is an album that, while often samey and, in the grand scheme of things, says next to nothing, heralds the arrival of a highly talented artist.
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Aug 2, 2013He's got talent to spare, but at this point he's swimming in an idyllic creek, not a raging river, and no amount of howling will banish demons that have yet to be summoned.
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Jun 24, 2013Odell has shown his promise but he has yet to prove his range.
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Jun 20, 2013He may yet rise above the glut of similar-sounding Sheehans, Buggs and Mumfords, but hasn't yet found his voice.
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UncutJun 18, 2013For the most part, though, Long Way Down is relentless in its pursuit of a teen audience easily won over by a sensitive man-boy who knows his way around a piano. [May 2013, p.75]
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Q MagazineJun 18, 2013There are too many songs here set to the same humdrum pace. But those are the sort of flaws you expect from a debut. [May 2013, p.112]
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Jun 21, 2013Long Way Down is stuffed with bogus sensitivity, crystallisations of emotional disquiet couched in chant choruses, and polite piano arrangements reliant on a few chord-changes.
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Jun 24, 2013Here on Long Way Down, neither of Odell’s gifts [powerful tenor]--or their intimacy--are given space or time, lost instead in a sea of messy arrangements and a sense that, however fatuous, more must certainly mean better.
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Jun 20, 2013Odell may well sell a lot of records (though long term, he may not) but as far as art to engage and inspire goes, Long Way Down has precious little to recommend it.
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Jun 24, 2013He specialises in staggeringly banal lyrics ("Grow old with me", "When you hold me in your arms I can feel your heart") delivered in an overwrought cry-baby warble, and song structures with big predictable sub-Keane, sub-Arcade Fire crescendos.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 37 out of 45
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Mixed: 6 out of 45
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Negative: 2 out of 45
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Jan 17, 2016
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Jul 5, 2013
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Jun 29, 2013