Tom Baxter: 'Better'

We love quiet, tender love songs as much as the next bed-wetting student, but when you have to spend an hour fiddling with your computer settings to make the song's vocals even faintly audible, you know someone needs to flick the switches up a few notches in the studio. It might be Baxter's rather predictable and trite lyrics that explain the muffled volume, or perhaps the looping, meandering melody. Either way, this isn't half dreary.

There are occasional sparks of excitement when Baxter switches his power up and lets his calming vocals slide around the guitar plucks and strings, but with lyrics like "What I'm trying to say is you make things better / No matter what the day is / With you here it's better", you don't need us to explain that it's hardly pulsating. If it gets attached to a popular TV ad or lumped on the back of a soppy scene in Hollyoaks, it might register decently in the charts. But if it doesn't, we'll probably be hearing less of Tom Baxter than we are now. Which isn't very much anyway.