Tom Odell's debut is a sparse, piano-driven meditation on heartbreak that trusts vulnerability over arrangement. Recorded largely by Odell himself with producer Jonny Coffer's restrained hand, the album frames his distinctive voice—ragged, emotional—as the primary instrument. Sequencing builds cumulative weight across twelve tracks; "Another Love" ranks among the finest contemporary piano ballads. Essential for anyone seeking late-night introspection rendered through genuine craft.
There are albums that feel like they were recorded specifically for the hour after everyone else has gone to sleep, and How to Dress Well is one of them.
Tom Odell was twenty-two when he made this record. Twenty-two, and already writing like someone who’d had his heart broken in a way that leaves a scar you can feel when the weather changes. The album came out in October 2013 on Columbia Records, preceded by the Songs from Another Love EP that had already made people pay attention. But this was the real thing — a full statement from a kid who’d been playing piano since he could reach the keys.
The Sessions
The record was produced by Jonny Coffer, who’d worked with Emeli Sandé and clearly knew how to frame a voice without drowning it. They recorded largely at The Pool in Miloco’s Bermondsey complex in London — a room that has a way of giving piano a certain weight, a certain room-sound that sits between intimate and cinematic.
Odell plays nearly everything himself: piano, guitar, the skeletal arrangements that frame his voice. The personnel list is short by design. This was never meant to be a band record. It’s closer to a confessional, and Coffer was smart enough to let the space breathe rather than fill it.
What Coffer understood — and what a lesser producer would have ruined — is that Odell’s voice is the instrument. That slightly ragged upper register, the way he pushes into a note like he’s not sure it’ll hold him. You don’t layer that in reverb. You put it in a room and let it stand.
The Songs
“Another Love” opens the album and is, I’ll just say it plainly, one of the better piano ballads written in the last fifteen years. The chord progression shouldn’t work as many times as it repeats. It does.
“Can’t Pretend” moves differently — there’s more motion in the arrangement, a kind of restless energy that suggests Odell was aware this record couldn’t be all slow burns. “Grow Old with Me” is the one that gets you if you’re in the wrong mood at the right time. Or the right mood at the wrong time. Something like that.
The sequencing matters here. This isn’t a record where you shuffle. Side one establishes the emotional vocabulary; side two spends it. By the time you reach “Till I Lost” and “Sense,” you’ve been somewhere, and the journey back feels longer than it should.
What Lingers
Records like this have a complicated afterlife. “Another Love” became enormous — sync placements, TV spots, the inevitable moment where you hear it in a supermarket and feel oddly protective of it. That kind of reach can make people dismiss the album it came from.
Don’t. The song earned its ubiquity, and the album around it deserved better attention than it received. There’s a specificity to Odell’s writing that gets lost in the hype conversation — the way a lyric like “all my tears have been used up” lands not as melodrama but as genuine exhaustion. He wasn’t performing sadness. He was reporting it.
Put this on after ten o’clock. Piano first in the mix, everything else secondary. That’s the only setup it needs.