Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Sensuality is often coupled with a sense of joy, the conclusion of pleasure and rapture in knowing that you are bold in your charm, that you are seen as desirable enough to bring your sexual freedom to the arms of another human being.

What if though, sensuality was in fact the acceptance of melancholic thought patterns and the truth behind the open soul of benevolent love, that by exposing the mind as being as naked and vulnerable as the body in the grip of passionate encounters, we become more in tune with the physical reality of the universe that carnality is for the lustful, but that the fragility of the mind is for the true believers of absolute love and the authority of sexual confidence.

That confidence and music authority has been somewhat missing in certain quarters, and for a band such as London Grammar to be out of the limelight in terms of album releases is to feel as though the sensuality of expression has been silenced, that the soil in which stand firm upon, has been removed from beneath our feet and for which the conscious listener has surely felt the void around them consume their soul.

Whichever way we feed our music soul, we need to understand and retain empathy for how melancholy and sensuality is the driving force of how we maintain pleasure, and in the band’s new album, Californian Soil, the sense of occasion is to be found in the heart of the threesome’s authority; and whilst they may have been missing from the studio since 2017, to return with such an abundance of sound, of emotional turmoil and deep longing wrapped up in the arms of self-neglect, is to understand that the credibility of the group has never diminished, only been enhanced by their long sojourn and the sensuality of their outlook.

Across moments of introspection and insight such as Lose Your Head, How Does It Feel, Call Your Friends, I Need The Light, the album title track of Californian Soil, and thesheer outstanding nature of regret and loss in the album’s finale of America, London Grammar have returned with their heart in the hands and their mind open to the experiences gained in the last five years, and it is the definition of sensual, of melancholic beauty making your pulse race harder.

A welcome return for London Grammar, Californian Soil is the place where the listener can appreciate the sensuous meet with the relaxed and empathic.

Ian D. Hall