London Grammar have come a long way since their debut album, If You Wait. While avoiding the mainstream sounds of their contemporaries, four albums have allowed the group to grow and mature. In the process, London Grammar has created a delicate blend of searing lyrics and alternative musicality that occasionally reaches its apogee in The Greatest Love.
The album starts with ‘House’, a track released earlier this year that encouraged the view that London Grammar was back with a new progressive sound. ‘House’ loosely, but rather ingeniously, borrows from the house music genre, particularly in its chorus and off-set mellow but lively beats. Once the song pairs its tune with Hannah Reid’s iconic voice, it’s a testament to the sound of London Grammar. However, ‘House’ also feels like a strange song — both the first single and track for the album — because it fails to capture the sounds and music from which most of The Greatest Love is composed.
Unarguably, a juxtaposition occurs when the album’s second and best track, ‘Fakest Bitch’, begins. Starting with gentle melodies on the piano and the soft strumming of the guitar, ‘Fakest Bitch’ feels acoustic and haunting in every sense that ‘House’ feels its opposite. Apart from ‘Fakest Bitch’ being let down by occasional lyrical tautologies (‘People don’t change, people stay the same / We are what we are, when we’re falling apart’), the track proves a highlight for the album. In every instance, the track reaffirms that London Grammar knows how to write about hurt and pain while undercutting it with sentiments of anger and resentment.
Similar album highlights include tracks like ‘Rescue’, ‘Kind Of Man’, and a personal favourite, ‘Sante Fe’. ‘Sante Fe’ stands out because it blends both the earlier and newer sounds of London Grammar. It features a dramatic chorus of layered harmonies and instrumental crescendos partnered with stripped-back verses that perfectly match Reid’s voice and stunning lyricism.
A final standout comes from the album’s titular track, ‘The Greatest Love’, a song all about charting the album’s growth, themes, and dichotomies. Its chorus, dominated by Reid’s vocals and the simple yet infinitely layered lyrics (‘I need you because you are a woman / I’ll hate you because you are a woman / And I’ll love you because you are a woman’) positions the song, and the album on a larger scale, in a place of liminality. Best viewed through the contextual lens of the birth of Reid’s baby boy, the song lyrics raise the contentions between the wider sexes in society today. The Greatest Love shines as a lyrical masterclass in moments like these.
Sadly, some songs let The Greatest Love down, especially when the group’s loyalty to their earlier sound stops them from indulging in the music that shows their growth. Songs like ‘Ordinary Life’ favour melodic simplicity and unusual implementations of autotune that give the track an unpolished garage-band feel that is unrepresentative of the larger album’s quality. In particular, its placement before the crisp production of ‘Santa Fe’ means ‘Ordinary Life’ is quickly overshadowed for lacking depth or providing anything remotely unique to the group’s discography.
Additionally, ‘Into Gold’ ends on a sweeping racket of instrumentalism that breaks up a perfectly fine track and never clearly justifies itself. As more abstract and experimental, the loose foray into a more singular electronic styling marks a failed experiment that detracts from the more successful elements across the album. While weaker songs like ‘Into Gold’ and ‘Ordinary Life’ don’t ruin the album, they hold it back and lend to a more unpolished sound than previous albums.
Despite the occasionally weak tracks, London Grammar has essentially created another great album featuring tracks like the soon-to-be-fan-favourite ‘Fakest Bitch’. Comprising new and old sounds, mixed with varying successes, The Greatest Love is still a deep and complex demonstration of lyricism and the power that London Grammar’s sound lends to these words.
Words by Sam Pegg
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