Non Believer: London Grammar and the Case Against Moving On

Truth Is a Beautiful Thing is the album I put on when work runs late and the glass of red is the only thing keeping me company. "Oh Woman Oh Man," "Rooting for You," "Leave the War with Me"—they have a particular quality at that hour. They don’t demand anything, don’t perform for you, just occupy the room with something that feels earned.

Hannah Reid, Dominic Major, and Dan Rothman have now put out the video for "Non Believer," and it does what London Grammar almost always does: makes the surrounding noise feel embarrassing by comparison. The music industry as it currently operates rewards speed and surface, volume and novelty. London Grammar ignores all of it and makes records that move slowly and mean it.

Hannah Reid’s voice is the obvious thing to talk about, but the obvious thing is also just true—it’s built from the combination of pure force and controlled fragility, and she knows exactly when to deploy each. "Non Believer" is a case study in that balance: the song builds without ever feeling like it’s building, and by the time it opens up you’ve already been pulled further in than you realized.

There’s a kind of stubbornness to liking London Grammar at this point. They’re not a discovery anymore. But there’s also something clarifying about music that doesn’t care whether you’re paying attention in the approved contemporary manner. You can ignore them out of some performative commitment to what’s new, or you can let the record play. One of those options leaves you somewhere deeper inside yourself than you were before. The other one just keeps you moving.