If You Wait | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Studio album by London Grammar | ||||
Released | 6 September 2013 | |||
Recorded | 2012–13 | |||
Studio |
|
|||
Genre | ||||
Length | 43:22 | |||
Label |
|
|||
Producer | ||||
London Grammar chronology | ||||
|
||||
Singles from If You Wait | ||||
|
Professional ratings | |
---|---|
Aggregate scores | |
Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 75/100 |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
Clash | 8/10 |
Consequence of Sound | |
Drowned in Sound | 9/10 |
The Independent | |
musicOMH | |
NME | 7/10 |
The Observer | |
Pitchfork | 7.1/10 |
PopMatters | 9/10 |
If You Wait is the debut studio album by English indie pop band London Grammar, released on 6 September 2013 by Metal & Dust Recordings and Ministry of Sound. Seven singles have been released from the album: "Metal & Dust", "Wasting My Young Years", "Strong", "Nightcall", "Hey Now", "Sights" and "If You Wait". The album debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 33,130 copies.
After the band signed with Ministry of Sound and Big Life Management they began the first sessions of the album in early 2012 with Cam Blackwood. Later that year he was replaced by Tim Bran and Roy Kerr. Hannah Reid described the collaboration as 'Tim is amazing at recording, of finding the best way of recording a guitar or my vocal. Roy had the strongest relationship with Dot and they worked on production together'.
The album's lyrics are mainly based upon vocalist Hannah Reid's personal life, in particular her troubled teenage years, prompting The Guardian to suggest that this was "the first quarter-life-crisis album."
If You Wait received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 75, based on 19 reviews.
Andy Gill of The Independent summarised the album's production and instrumentation as "all beautifully sketched to evoke the crepuscular intimacies of the songs."