Back we head into the indietronica joys of London Grammar. No points for guessing their location of origin or where they met. But there is something fastidious about a group with ties to the UK capital and the vast expanse of educational spoils. The Greatest Love marks the trio’s fifth release, and their sound has never felt so similar. Hannah Reid dishes out the brutal tones of a band on the run, away from their experiences as they find themselves cornered by reflective purpose. The Greatest Love becomes an inevitable look back at where the band comes from, the interactions that moulded them, and their sound, which sounds as bold as expected. We are on their turf and opener House makes it known. Play by the rules London Grammar hold themselves to, and enjoy their intensity.
While the acoustic tenderness of Fakest Bitch may welcome you in, the insecurities and anger found in the lyrical strokes from Reid are exceptional. There is a brutality paired nicely with the acoustic flourishes heard within. You and I follows suit – a reflective process comes to a head with the anger held against those we were once intimate with. The Greatest Love mourns the death of its titular closeness and does so with a raging honesty from Reid. They continue with the universal fundamentals founded in their name. London, by their argument, is a city of experiences everyone can relate to and while The Greatest Love has plenty of those moments within, it fails to capture the specifics of the occasion at hand. A shame, really, because much of the album is exceptional. A genuine set of experiences which provide those bold flourishes London Grammar have been searching for.
But it does not last all too long. Pieces like Ordinary Life feel for the everyday spots of joy in life but come up a bit short. It is the locale choices which give London Grammar a limited scope, odd considering they broaden their horizons with the likes of LA and Santa Fe. Instead, they sound better when the instrumental flavours of their collaborative process kick in. Kind of Man is a welcome, if repetitive example of this. There is a spotty boldness within The Greatest Love, in both its instrumentals and its lyrics. But these moments cannot coexist. It is one or the other and it makes for an imbalanced, often same-y experience. Rescue struggles the most of all, the repetition of the vocals not quite matched by the instrumental interest.
Into Gold suffers the same fate and while it is by no means a shame to hear it, there is a noise on this penultimate track which London Grammar could, and should, have leaned into more. A tech-like swing to their soft electronica. The Greatest Love is a decent listen, a laid-back and stripped-down experience which has an emotional bite to it. Its closing title track has the honesty and openness of a lyrically sound experience and while the string sections feel inevitable, there is power within its performance. A neat album, one which is not going to push the fold but does not fall to pieces on a repeat listen.
