Tom Odell is in an unassuming café in Hackney, marvelling at the signed photos of musical icons on the wall: Jarvis, Nick Cave … “Nina Simone!” It appears that many of music’s greatest have hunched around one of these little tables for an omelette. He takes his drink from the owner, then leads the Standard through a door by the kitchen into a labyrinthine recording complex to his own little studio. Settling into a couch in the soundproofed womb-like room, he expands on life as an independent artist which has seen him hit a purple patch of creativity; his new album, A Wonderful Life, is his fourth in five years and probably his best to date.
“We only finished it a few weeks ago, but I don’t like sitting on it for too long,” he says. “Back when I was on the major labels, I’d finish a record and it’d sit in a queue for a year to be released. I’d always wonder what we were waiting for. Nowadays I finish it and put it out. It’s so uncompromising.
