London Grammar
Main stage, Saturday
★★★★☆
London Grammar’s dreamy electropop has the quality of a lullaby performed at a rave, a combination of gently blissful melodies and blitzing beats that proves the perfect mix on night two of All Together Now.
A lot has changed for the band since their last Irish festival performance, three years ago. Most notably, Hannah Reid, the band’s singer, and her Irish partner have had a son, an experience that informed London Grammar’s 2024 LP, The Greatest Love.
That album was a not wholly successful attempt to push into new territory: the songs were slower and leaned more on Reid’s powerful voice. There was lots to admire, but it lacked the rush of feeling that characterised formative hits such as the harrowing Wasting My Young Years.
Tasteful and sometimes tedious, the record was not the stuff of thrilling festival sets, and in their Saturday headline slot London Grammar wisely focus on their older songs, beginning with the woozy double whammy of Hey Now and Californian Soil.
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Reid, who has experienced stage fright, isn’t a natural attention seeker. But she has a slowly fizzing charisma on the urgent How Does It Feel, a meditation from 2021 on the dark side of the music business.
A charge sometimes directed at London Grammar is that their music is mannered to a fault. But no such accusation could be made against this gripping set.
As well as their cover of Nightcall, by the noirish French producer Kavinsky – a hypnotic banger made to be listened to cruising down a motorway at 3am, and perhaps best known for soundtracking the opening credits to Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Drive – the night features a surprise and moving duet between Reid and the Co Kildare singer Gemma Cox.
It ends with the rapturous fade out of Lose Your Head, a chunk of sublime electronica that the band work into a techno belter. It’s lapped up by an enthusiastic main-stage crowd. As the second night of All Together Now draws to a close, it’s clear that London Grammar are speaking the audience’s language.
