December at Breaking More Waves towers was a bit of an odd one, because with the exception of just a handful of posts after Christmas we took a holiday from the blog. Not that you would particularly notice, as in November we pre-wrote and scheduled a whole number of articles including our annual albums of 2012 run down for the twelfth month. This doesn’t mean that we stopped listening to new music though, and so come the new year we find ourselves with a number of new artists that we’ve heard that we want to bring to your attention, if you haven’t already heard of them. We started a little earlier today with Layla and now we continue with London Grammar.
London Grammar is a 3 piece based in London (well at least the name makes sense) although they have northern connections as Hannah Reid and Dan Rothman (two of their number) met at Nottingham University with third member Dot Major being added to the line-up at some point after that. They’ve been gigging around the capital for the last couple of years whilst releasing material to the web on Soundcloud (all of which has now disappeared). They recently created a flurry of internet activity and subsequent high Hype Machine chart placement when the song we’re streaming below Hey Now was sent out to blogs (including our own) by a very well-known PR company.
However, we’d like to think that if Hey Now had come to the blogs via the artist direct rather than the PR route there would have still been a swell of love towards it, because it’s a near perfect tune, with chilled soulful vocals and a poised degree of restraint. It’s those elements that give it a very of-the-moment sound that seems to be finding its way onto the alt. coffee table more and more often these days; Jessie Ware, The XX, and Rhye being some of its other major exponents. Right now it’s hip to be into this stuff if you’re in your early to mid-twenties, but we wonder as we move further into 2013 if this music will also become the domain of 40 something mums and dads as well, as it's very accessible - maybe we could give it a genre tag as new easy listening?. After all Sade and Everything But The Girl created the same graceful melancholy vibe back in the 80’s and in the 90’s the now much derided Dido did the same with her inoffensive songs like Thank You and My Life (and she’s back into the fold with a new album called Girl Who Got Away for 2013 as well).
But irrespective of if London Grammar retain blog credibility or end up being purchased by the Tesco one album a year brigade, the most important thing is good tunes. If they can match the quality of Hey Now, that won’t be a problem.
London Grammar - Hey Now
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