In Review: Tom Odell At The Vic
Photos by Meriah Fearon
On the evening of Saturday, October 14, the Vic Theatre was packed with fans excited to experience an evening of music from British singer-songwriter Tom Odell.
Full disclosure: I had absolutely no idea who Tom Odell was before this. I have also never written a concert review before. But my sister runs Amplified Chicago and she invited me to join her at this concert since I was in town visiting. I’m a youth librarian by day with a passion for music, and I like to write (and I sometimes help with editing behind the scenes on Amplified), so I volunteered to share my perspective on the show.
More than anything else, what amazed me about this concert was how captivated the audience was by the performance. I hear a lot of talk about how people these days have no attention span, that the internet and short form media have rotted our brains to the point that we can’t enjoy the simple pleasures of life anymore. And while that may be true to some extent, at Odell’s concert I was amazed to see such a full crowd so entirely enamored by a guy sitting behind a grand piano singing about his feelings. Odell put his heart on his sleeve, and the whole audience treated it with the utmost care and respect. As someone who does music and movement programming with kids, I was completely in awe of his ability to capture and hold the attention of the crowd in the palm of his hand.
It has been over 10 years since Odell released his debut EP, Songs From Another Love. Since then, he has amassed quite the following on social media, with over 2.1 million followers on Tik Tok. In the crowd, I was impressed to see how many people in the audience were able to sing along with every word to each song he played. I imagine sharing the experience of making music with such an invested crowd of dedicated followers must be a dream for Odell, who said in a 2013 interview with Glamour that “if someone is able to relate to my music or my lyrics [...] It's a really nice feeling. Music is shared. It's a shared feeling, that's what music is all about. When you listen to a song with someone else, it becomes more than just a song. It defines relationships."
One of the most impressive tools in Odell’s arsenal is his emotional storytelling, which is certainly a large part of what has led so many people to connect with his music. A song may start in a simple place with just vocals over piano or guitar, but as the story moves forward there are added layers of instruments and vocals that masterfully build emotion in the listener. The storytelling in his live performance went so far beyond any one element--of course the musical composition and the lyrics are what led people to the concert, but in his live performance I was so impressed by how elements like lighting were used to evoke emotion in each song. The back of the stage was wrapped with a big white curtain that allowed the lighting to adjust for the needs of each specific song, and the long shadows cast by the musicians onto the backdrop added an element of drama that fit the music perfectly.
While Odell was the reason the crowd showed up, this show would not have been the same without the amazing band he had behind him. Everyone on that stage was so present with the music, and it was impossible not to have fun in the crowd while watching the fun they were having on stage.
Odell’s newest album, Black Friday, is set to release in January. The title track was released in September, and already has well over 21 million streams on Spotify. And if you have the opportunity to see Odell perform live with more time to prepare than I had, I would definitely recommend learning the lyrics to his songs so you can share in the experience of connecting with a community by singing along :)
Photos by Meriah Fearon