London songwriter Freya Ridings found success thanks to Love Island, which played her song Lost Without You over some emotional moments in the last series.

It’s hard to think of an artist further from Mallorca’s teeny bikinis, burnished tans and brash emoting: Ridings specialises in chilly, pained piano balladry, and her debut album plays like a 12-part audition to bag herself this year’s John Lewis Christmas ad.

Most of it is just Brit School graduate Ridings at the piano, playing tinkly high notes so delicate they would struggle to summon a two-inch plastic ballerina from her music-box slumber.

You could see her minimalist approach as admirably defiant in light of the current charts arms race – every song a firing squad of hitmakers – if it wasn’t so dull. Poison sounds like the Muzak version of Evanescence’s goth-pop classic Bring Me to Life; the shadow of Florence + the Machine hangs over everything, showing up Ridings’ meagre vocal power by comparison.

She can belt, and does, often, but it’s that kind of indie-voiced, back-of-throat emoting that has become a byword for authenticity. It sounds as if she’s detached her lower jaw to reach the low notes of You Mean the World to Me, while her enunciation melts on Wishbone: “Tell me that I’ll see you again” becomes “tehmethaaseeyahga”.

When she and producer Greg Kurstin attempt to dress things up, the results are never anything but boilerplate. The pounding Castles wants to be Rolling in the Deep but is more splashing in the shallows. Love Is Fire hits the button marked “Edge guitar” and comfortably assumes its role as the rousing climax towards the end of her live setlists. With its hollers of “water!”, stomp and vocal frenzy, Holy Water is like a parody of bland white pop stars’ attempts to go gospel. Except it’s real.

Tying all this together are Ridings’ pained yarns of love lost, her voice wobbling so fiercely you wonder whether she was forced to record in a deep freeze. You want to offer her a blanket, suggest she deletes Tinder for a bit. Maybe a stint on Love Island would do her the world of good.