Tommy Ludgate – Sweet Release

“I’m fed up with my own company/quite fed up with this extreme monotony”. These words could so easily describe my own feelings after listening to this song, for ‘Sweet Release’ has all the artistic merits of a Craig David B-side.

Right, enough cheap shots, lets get a little bit of background info on Tommy Ludgate. She was a contest winner on slicethepie.com and through this got awarded fifteen grand to make an album. ‘Sweet Release’ is one of the songs taken from that album and Ludgate deals in that hybrid brand of bluesy soul pop. Her music exists in purgatory, midway between what Gabrielle and Shola Ama were doing in the nineties and what Adele and Amy Winehouse are doing today.

‘Sweet Release’ proves that having a good voice is not enough if you ain’t got any soul. There is nothing technically wrong with Ludgate’s vocals, but there is no feeling in the tune, she could just so easily be singing about the supreme corner handling of a Vauxhall Corsa.

After reading through her official website and watching a few of her performances on YouTube the best advice for Tommy is to vamp it up a bit, show a bit of character. Try to develop a personality, even if this means lying and making up a rags to riches back-story involving Romany Gypsies, and an awkward encounter with Derek Acorah. Because at this moment in time it’s difficult to get into a singer that sounds so safe that in comparison she makes Miley Cyrus sound like Lydia Lunch.