Tom Odell's an interesting prospect: The 26-year-old is an Ivor Novello and BRIT award winner with two albums to his name, who mixes piano-laden ballads with affecting pop melodies. His sound is the kind of music that Jools Holland would merrily tap his foot along to after he's three wines deep and yammering on about pianos, so a Tom Odell Christmas record was always inevitable.
On this EP we get two Christmas covers and an Odell-penned seasonal original recorded during BBC Live sessions, replete with soaring choirs and a taste of violin tremolo. We get the radio edit of Odell's latest single "Silhouette", a blustery piece of gamely pop, and a cover of The Beatles' "Real Love" which is already familiar to some as the soundtrack to 2014's John Lewis Christmas advert.
This EP is everything you expect: a masterful, but not particularly original, take on festive music. If you're a fan of Tom Odell you'll like it, if you're a fan of earnest Christmas music you'll like it, but you can't help but feel that it's all been done before. Spending All My Christmas With You is purely okay, offering a by-numbers take on tired Christmas tunes.
