Album Review: London Grammar – The Greatest Love
3 min read
London Grammar have returned to release The Greatest Love through Metal & Dust and Ministry of Sound. The Bands fourth album, released just over a decade after their highly acclaimed debut If You Wait, The Greatest Love was to celebrate a new chapter for the band, with vocalist Hannah Reid recently becoming a mum, and the band exploring “a newfound sense of freedom” – so let’s dive in!
Kicking off with their first single release from the album we have House – a trip-hop-come-drum & bass snare beat, and the ethereal vocals of Reid… though I did find the vocals and lyrics somewhat underwhelming – a bit… basic and very much operating within her comfort zone. Slowing the tempo down for Fakest Bitch, a somewhat personal acoustic track about a former friend who is a bit, shall we say, duplicitous… and this style of down tempo ‘dear diary’ track continues with You and I (though the message is a lot more positive!), and through to LA, which feels a lot like a take on a Zero7 track in its composition, with once again a feeling that lyrically and vocally it’s somewhat underwhelming.
Moving to a very turn-of-the-century trip-hop feel Ordinary Life has a good beat (though the lyrics feel like a bad fit to the track), while Santa Fe sees us return to low-fi beats, and lyrics that feel somewhat like a musical take on a diary entry as we saw earlier, and this combination continues in Kind of Man. Rescue ups the tempo with an almost drum and bass skip-beat quality to it – though lyrically its, again, extremely limited (and to be honest the beat isn’t particularly complex either).
Penultimate track (and most recent single release) Into Gold for me embarrasses the previous tracks… this is clearly the best track on the album by a country mile, and in all aspects – vocals, lyrics, synths (both complexity and quality), beat, timing – the lot! This is what the band CAN do when they’re firing on all cylinders!!! Rounding off the album we have title track The Greatest Love – which is the other stand out track on the album, a down-tempo acoustic track, again in the vein of a Zero7 classic, but this time done as London Grammar should – a spine-tingling blend of ambient instrumentation, ethereal vocals and classical sounds.
The Greatest Love is not my greatest album love – in the main it was underwhelming. Until the penultimate track I felt that vocally and lyrically it was basic and executed in a manner as to not, let’s say, push the boundaries of what Hannah can do. Some of the beats were good, but they didn’t pair off with the vocals well. The last two tracks however… wow!!!! That is what London Grammar should be doing!!! Ultimately for me this album a flop, however I implore listeners to endure (or, more likely, skip through when bored) because both of the final tracks have made it to my favourites list… Less a “Greatest Love”, more a humdrum relationship with a couple of exceptional high points.
