Metal & Dust
Pop, 2013

Forget all the hype and “trip hop” stuff – right at its core, London Grammar is basically emo little people’s replacement for Evanescence after Ben Moody turned into a crazy megalomaniac and killed that group. Lead vocalist Hannah Reid has a powerful lilting voice that could match Amy Lee’s note by note, and the songs in London Grammar’s debut effort is all about the angst inspired by woes and blues of adolescence.

Songs like Hey Now and Sights are arresting showstoppers, thanks to that voice that demands all the attention in the room. All the other songs are pretty much in the same vein, and there lies both the strength and weakness of If You Wait: taken apart song by song, each song is generally solid; put them side by side in the same album, and they all start to sound like one indistinguishable long song with some woman wailing over everything.

Lyrically, the songs can also be on the insipid side. On Sights, there is this gem:

Turn into winter lights
Keeping your strength
When it gets dark at night
What are you made of
Water and glass

Okay, girl.

On Metal & Dust, there are deep thoughts everywhere.

And all foundation that we made
Built to last, they disintegrate
And when your house begins to rust
Oh, it’s just metal and dust

Profound, isn’t it?

If You Wait is a solid album, even if its songs tend to sound the same too much of their own good and it’s best to listen without paying attention to the words. It may not be as heavy in angst as Amy Lee wrestling with alligators in her brain or something like that, but at least we now have a new distraction to keep those blue little darlings out there from cutting themselves.