In September 2013, three game-changing debut albums were released. Lorde table-flipped pop music with Pure Heroine; Haim pulled 80s rock nostalgia back into the charts with Days Are Gone; but before either of those records, London Grammar released their debut album If You Wait - a sublimely intricate cocktail of trip-hop, electronica and pop that infiltrated Spotify playlists across the world, spawning an abundance of club remixes that kept the British trio's songs on high rotate well beyond the average album cycle.
Coincidentally, each artist has this year faced the task of beating the dreaded 'sophomore slump'; Lorde with Melodrama, Haim with Something to Tell You, and in June, London Grammar with Truth is a Beautiful Thing. The three-piece not only had legions of fans waiting with bated breath for their next move, but pressure from a label perspective to deliver on a debut that was as commercially successful as it was critically. Guitarist Dan Rothman (who formed London Grammar at university with singer Hannah Reid and keyboard/percussionist Dominic 'Dot' Major) says the three of them were well aware of that pressure - and he readily admits it was a tough process.
"It was f***ing difficult. We had such an expectation to live up to, in terms of the sales of the first album being so strong, and then obviously the expectation of a fan base that we knew was going to be there. I think that was something that we always worried about, maybe more than anything else - will our fans like this change in direction?
"It certainly felt like we were discovering something new and we were very experimental in terms of the instrumentation on the second album, and also the way we wrote the songs as well. It was very difficult to actually find the sound of the record - but in a way it took us that time the first time round. I don't suppose that the third one should be any different."
