“We Were Lost”: London Grammar On The Long Road To Their Second Album
For the first thirty seconds or so that Dan Rothman is talking, I can’t actually hear anything he’s saying.
The phone line from the UK is crackly and, at times, ludicrously windy — as if Rothman had decided to take the call in a wind tunnel. After a minute of some frantic ‘can you hear me?!’s and a brief moment of silence as Rothman shifts to another room in his house, the line finally clears.
It’s early morning in Britain, and the London Grammar guitarist is at the beginning of a hectic day of press ahead of the release of their second album Truth Is A Beautiful Thing. To say the album is highly-anticipated is an understatement: their 2013 debut If You Wait was hugely-successful, ending up certified double-platinum in their home country and platinum in Australia.
But it wasn’t just about the numbers: If You Wait cemented the band’s signature sound in a way that a debut album rarely does. Which makes following it up all the more daunting.
Rothman spoke to Music Junkee about this pressure, and about the long road the band took to create their second album.
If You Wait was massively successful. Did you feel much pressure coming back into the second record?
Yes, a huge amount of pressure. Too much pressure in some ways, and I think we put pressure on ourselves too much as well, but that’s natural. That’s why it’s been a difficult second album. I think it’s just classic story: making your second album, especially if you had a successful first one.
Did you go into it with a clear idea of what you wanted to do?
No. Not in the slightest. I think we went in with some songs, and a lot of experiences of what it was like to be on the road for a long time and missing family, all those kinds of emotions. We tried to take that into the studio and make a record and that was really all we had.
We were kind of…. we were in the wilderness, I think in many ways. I feel we were lost, and it was really about trying to find ourselves as the band again.
You guys created a signature sound with If You Wait. Did you feel like it was going to be a challenge to continue that sound, or did you want to consciously move it forward?
I don’t think we thought it would be difficult to continue. I think what was difficult was not replicating it entirely. We were trying to do something where we incorporated that sound, but pushed it in a new direction. I don’t think we wanted make a record that was identical to the first. It wouldn’t have fulfilled us.
“We were in the wilderness, I think in many ways. I feel we were lost.”
I think we were conscious that that’s what people liked and we would have to respect our fans. Though I think Truth… definitely sounds different to the first, but I think it maintains our sound — it’s very clearly our band. We have an ambience that is coherent through both records.
You said in an interview with NME that you tried to provide a lot more variety with Truth... that it’s not “samey”. Was that a particular concern for you, looking back on the first record? Like, “We definitely want to change those dynamics?”
Well, when we made the first record, we really consciously wanted to have an album that was really consistent. So that the mood was very much one mood throughout.
With this album, I think it relates culturally to where we are in terms of music — people have every kind of music at their fingertips, and they want to listen to all different types of music, that’s the culture now. People are consuming different types of music and art simultaneously, and in very short bursts.
For us it was like, “Maybe we should have an album that’s more of a landscape; that has changes so we can take people on more of a journey”. So it’s a little bit more varied in that sense, and it’s a little bit more fulfilling overall, rather than just fulfilling one mood.
“You’re probably not going to listen to [the album] if you wanna get pilled up before you’re out tonight”
Having said that, you’re probably not going to listen to it if you wanna get pilled up before you’re out tonight — it ain’t that kind of record [laughs]. But maybe there’s a little bit more terrain there for people to traverse.
You worked with Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence & The Machine) who is one of the biggest producers on the planet. How did that come about, and what did you learn from him?
The reason we worked with him was fairly simple. He’s managed by the same manager as us, so that was a bit obvious route in, very only on. We met him and we liked him, and then we went to his studio and it was just like, “Wow, this may be the best studio in the world.” That was a big factor.
Then beyond that, I think Paul is obviously just a legendary producer. He idolises producers like Phil Spector. People like Phil Spector, they used to push their artist fairly hard — often to the point of dangerously disrupting their emotional state. That’s what Paul does. He ain’t fucking about, he pushes and he pushes you in a way you don’t necessarily want to go, but what that can provide is something quite electric. I think you can hear that electricity on a track like ‘Rooting For You,’ — Paul provided that.
Image via London Grammar Facebook page
How does he do that? I know a lot producers have special techniques to make you uncomfortable. What does Paul do?
The atmosphere in the studio is very tense. His studio is open — there is no barrier between the console and live room.
Now, that’s pretty unusual. If anybody has ever been in the studio before, 99 per cent of the time there will be a control booth where there’s a recording desk and then there’s a glass wall, where you look in to the people in the other room playing or singing or whatever they’re doing. There’s a clear definition, there’s a barrier between the two.
In Paul’s studio, that doesn’t exist. There is no barrier. The room is one room. That creates this bizarre environment of when somebody is performing, everybody has to shut the fuck up and everybody has to be in the process together, and that is an unusual experience. I do think that he can use that to create something different in a sense.
You also worked with Greg Kurstin, speaking of other massive, pop producers. Was that a conscious decision to choose those two producers, to push yourselves towards a more mainstream sound?
No, not really. We went out to work with Greg because we loved the Sia stuff that he’d worked on. He’d also done a lot of work with Beck, and I’m a huge fan of Beck. So we were really interested because of that. We’d also heard a lot of stories about Greg, about how incredible a musician he was, so he was really intriguing to us.
“We were attempting to make something less ambient and a bit more visceral and aggressive.”
So we went out there and our managers and labels were probably like, “Oh, they’re gonna do something really poppy”. In reality, we came out with the two least commercial sounding tracks of the whole album [laughs].
Going into the songs more directly, I think ‘Non Believer’ is probably my favourite track on the album so far.
I’m delighted you say that, because there were a few arguments about that song. The main one being that Hannah and Dot were concerned that it was too much of a departure. They felt that it was too different. I argued that that would be the reason that people liked it. So at least one person agreed with me, which is nice [laughs].
It was a fascinating track to make, particularly for me. We were attempting to make something less ambient and a bit more visceral and aggressive. We experimented with weird sounds and different kinds of instruments that we wouldn’t necessarily have used. I used a wah pedal on the guitar, which was a bit of a weird one for me.
In Hannah’s mind, it was the least emotionally driven song on the album, lyrically. Which was another reason for the disagreement. It was more imagery-based, a little bit more throwaway. But in the context of an album it’s important to have that variation, which is why we ended up putting it on.
Speaking of the lyrical content — If You Wait was very personal and introspective, whereas Truth sort of pushes that perspective outwards.
It’s funny, because when you analyse the lyrics a year down the line, you begin to decode them a way that’s like, “Oh, so that’s what I was thinking at this time” or, “Oh, that line is clearly about that.” It’s interesting how things become more clear when in retrospect.
I love the title, Truth Is A Beautiful Thing, and I think it’s almost quite sharp a title in these days of fake news and of post-truth. Did that occur to you when choosing that as the title?
This is what I’m saying. Sometimes you write something that suddenly takes on a different meaning, six months or a year down the line. So many people have said that [about the title], because you’re right: that meaning is probably in there. The entire record is about lying and truth — and that has become the most personal thing in global politics in particular at the moment.
There’s no doubt that there’s a connection there, whether or not, I don’t think it was an intentional one. We’re not a political band. We wouldn’t try to comment on fake news.
I guess the appropriate thing to say is that art holds a mirror up to society. That’s the point of it. The title seems to have done that, which is great. I’m really glad people connect with it because of that.
London Grammar Australian tour
Fremantle – September 16 at the Fremantle Arts Centre
Melbourne – September 19 at the Margaret Court Arena
Brisbane – September 23 at Riverstage
Sydney – September 25 & 26 at the Sydney Opera House
Tickets go on sale June 16.
Truth Is A Beautiful Thing is out now.
Jules LeFevre is a writer for inthemix and Music Junkee. She is on Twitter.