Album Review: Matt Cardle - Letters

Matt Cardle - Letters

So, last year's X-Factor winner finally releases his debut album hot on the heels of his cryingly disappointingly single Run For Your Life. Cardle - whose cover of Biffly Clyro's Many of Horrors was the second biggest selling single in the UK in 2010 - has made a record that sounds completely unlike anything that an ex-X Factor contestant has tried before, but that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Despite the quality of songwriting talent on this album - Starsailor's James Walsh, Eg White, Gary Barlow and David Sneddon (!) - Letters is a surprisingly disappointing and one-paced record.

Everything contained here - with the possible exception of opening track Starlight - is dreadful, turgid, plodding guitar pop. Sounding like the tracks on the cutting room floor of a 2003 era Embrace, Snow Patrol or Coldplay record, Letters attempts to deliver heartfelt, anthemic choruses but instead gradually descends into almost a pastiche of post-Britpop.

It's very earnest and while Cardle has a decent voice and may want to be taken seriously as an artist, it is at the very chart friendly end of the guitar pop spectrum. I can certainly see what he is trying to do here, but all that he's managed to do is create an emotional record that's entirely devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

There are probably some half decent songs hidden here but the slick production and desire to recreate Chasing Cars mean that Letters is forty five minutes of very, very average pop music.