There’s a horrible rumour about London Grammar, and it’s this: if it weren’t for Facebook, then one of 2013’s hippest bands would never have existed. Like many rumours, there is truth snooping around the fringes. The person who can clarify this is Dan Rothman (who shares a cigarette-brand surname with his London Grammar mate Dot Major).

“I was at Nottingham University, studying economics and philosophy, and I got friendly with some girls,” says Rothman. “One of them now happens to be my girlfriend, and another one was Hannah Reid. We all added each other on Facebook, and one day I noticed that in one of her profile pictures Hannah had a guitar. That’s how I found out that she was into music.

“She’s very shy, is Hannah, and I’m quite sure she wouldn’t have told me about how much she was into music. She’s coy about what she does, even now. As for her voice, I don’t think she realised how good it was back then, and even how good it is now.”

To get a sense of how hip London Grammar are, their quietly dramatic rise didn’t even factor in the acts-to-watch-in-2013 lists doing the rounds late last year. Over the past months, however, the trio have leapfrogged competitors with a burnished, despondent electronica-pop that references the likes of Portishead, The xx, Florence and the Machine and Fleetwood Mac.

Survey the evidence of such progress: a strong, insidiously melodic debut album, If You Wait (which was, surprisingly, overlooked for the Mercury music prize shortlist), featuring sublime tracks such as Strong, Wasting My Young Years and Metal & Dust and Nightcall; and, in Reid, a potential voice of the year.

As you can tell from Rothman’s comments, there is perhaps more focus on Reid than on him or Dot Major, who plays keyboards and drums. “Hannah is learning all about that, and we are all very protective of her. So many areas of the media want to talk to her, but if she said yes to even half, we know – and she knows – her voice would suffer. So we have to be careful of that.”

London Grammar formed at Nottingham University in 2009. Rothman and Reid initially wrote the songs; then they were joined by Major, who was a year below them. This was, recalls Rothman, amateur hour: characters formed, mistakes made, creative personalities forged. Nonetheless, a template for the London Grammar sound was established. That time was also, he stresses, fun.

“I’d been in bands before, school bands; you have the dream of getting signed, but it’s never going to happen because you’re all useless . . . I was wondering what in the name of God was I going to do with my life, and I came to the conclusion that music wasn’t really going to happen for me. Honestly, I’d almost given up on it as a future. Yet there we were, playing for the fun of it, and then we were spotted and signed . Odd, isn’t it? I was lucky enough to have made friends with Hannah and Dot. Without them, and Hannah’s voice in particular, I’m really not so sure things would have happened.”

Showcase events
Matters became more serious in 2011. The odd gig here and there had mutated into showcase events, which in turn transformed a few handfuls of casual listeners in dingy venues into an avid, if small, fan base. Now, from the band's point of view, it's all beginning to go stratospheric. What does Rothman make of the fuss about the band and their debut album?

“Although it’s been really quick in terms of how fast the critical acclaim has arrived, it’s also been coming through at a fairly steady pace. The past month or so, however, has been quite mad, as we’re all trying to sift through the hype as well as the more pragmatic, considered reactions.”

The conflict is all too obvious: all the attention is crazy, but at the same time Rothman, Major and Reid are overwhelmed and delighted with it. “We’re grateful, too, because, let’s be honest, it’s all we’ve ever wanted. We worked really hard on the album, and it’s a relief that people have actually bought it and seem to like it.”

Rothman pauses. Is a “but” about to make its presence felt? “Well, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me. I still don’t think we’re a very big band in commercial terms, and yet it’s all going really well. We’re trying to make sense of it all, as we know there’s such a long way to go.”

He realises that everything will calm down soon, and there’s an air of relief at the prospect of a calmer time to come. “That’d be no harm at all,” says Rothman. “We’re starting to tour America very soon, and that’ll take us out of the glare for a while. We’re nobodies out there, so that’ll be interesting to experience for a change.”

If You Wait is on Metal & Dust/Ministry of Sound. London Grammar play the Academy in Dublin on December 3rd