London Grammar – ‘If You Wait’

“Would you really want me in the light of day?” Hannah Reid sings on “Interlude (Live),” and it’s a fair question. London Grammar’s If You Wait is an album for late nights and wine-soaked afternoons, dark and dreary weather that never bursts into thunder. Its restraint, presented in piano chords and electric guitar notes plucked as clean as chicken dinner, gives the songs a potent tension that Reid, a dusky, somber alto, simmers against. I hear influences that span some 20 years: the atmosphere of Portishead, the weight of Sarah McLachlan, the recent drama of Lana Del Rey and the xx. If You Wait sometimes loses itself in mood, but at its best — “Wasting My Young Years,” the set’s most energetic moment — it’s a promising debut from a band with plenty of time left.

// If You Wait is out now on Columbia. (Buy)

Homepage photo credit: London Grammar via Instagram