Four years between your first and second album is long enough to make record companies a little nervous, especially when the early success of London Grammar – youthful specialists in sophisticated pop, a sort of YA Sade – felt so pace-setting. The trio’s atmospheric post-club nocturne Hey Now was a streaming sensation, helping embed them in both the public consciousness and innumerable Spotify playlists. In a very short time, singer Hannah Reid, guitarist Dan Rothman and keyboard/beats major-domo Dominic “Dot” Major became global stars, racking up more than 2m sales and pocketing an Ivor Novello along the way. An opportunistically speedy follow-up to their 2013 debut album If You Wait seemed fairly inevitable.
Instead, that album title looks increasingly prescient. London Grammar – whose pin-drop torch songs often seem to have shivers of anticipation hard-wired into them – have taken their time. Their second record is due in June, and this emphatically sold-out mini-tour of converted churches and historic halls is the foundational phase of what is likely a meticulously planned rollout to build on their already enviable international success.
At first, it seems, less is more. Reid silently takes the stage to sing, unaccompanied, the first half of Rooting for You in a beguiling demonstration of both vulnerability and vocal fortitude. Many London Grammar tracks obsessively examine relationships that have gone the way of the Hindenburg, but this new song finds some positivity in its emotional autopsy. It retains Reid’s endearing habit of embracing melodies that sometimes huskily dip into a lower register than you might predict for her sonorous voice. When Rothman and Major finally chime in with an immaculate sonic scaffold of echoey piano and delay-pedal guitar, it confirms LG V2.0 is a refinement rather than a root-and-branch reinvention.
Despite their musical poise, all three are still in their 20s and there are some welcome flashes of goofiness. Flickers, perhaps the closest London Grammar get to skanking, features Major playing bongos in a way you can imagine drifting through the walls of the Nottingham uni halls of residence where the band originated. On the luminous, swaying Sights, Reid misses her vocal cue, necessitating a giggly restart. Introducing a broiling new song, she outlines their conceptual approach with an arched eyebrow: “We thought maybe we should make a second album that’s less sad. Anyway, this song is called Hell to the Liars.”
After an emphatic Hey Now and the Novello-winning turbo-ballad Strong, the trio encore with their new album’s title track, Truth Is a Beautiful Thing, a ruminative, beatless head trip. Reid takes to a keyboard to pick out a simple, celestial piano progression that you can imagine being sampled, David Axelrod-style, in the not-too-distant future. Their actual finale is a little more energised, a cyber-augmented version of Metal and Dust that explodes into strobes and synthesised scree. The eventual, overriding sense is one of battle-scarred optimism. London Grammar offer a leavened apocalypse, perhaps the perfect soundtrack to 2017.
• At Town Hall, Birmingham, 4 April. Box office: 0121-780 3333. At Round Chapel, London, 6 April. Box office: 0208-986 0029. Details: londongrammar.com/#live