Glass Animals Discuss Coming to Terms with Their Resounding Success

When the British rock/pop band Glass Animals released its 2020 album, Dreamland, the pandemic limited the group’s ability to tour behind the record. And when the guys finally hit the road to support the album, which had become a huge hit thanks to the shimmering single “Heat Waves,” a song that marries a hip-hop groove with somber, upper-register vocals, touring wasn’t quite the same.

“We had to be incredibly careful during the tour,” says drummer Joe Seaward in a recent Zoom call from a Charlotte tour stop. Keyboardist Drew MacFarlane joined him on the call. Glass Animals perform on Wednesday, Aug. 21, at Blossom. “We were all having to be incredible careful about who we saw, which was no one, and where we went, which was nowhere. We spent all this time with each other in a bubble. We were very far away from home. And then, we were seeing thousands of people on stage. It was this weird life. We were sort of meeting with these people and seeing all this love and excitement, but we had to retreat to an insular way of living.”

When the band emerged from the other side of that album cycle, singer-guitarist Dave Bayley struggled to put everything in perspective. As he grappled with the unique nature of what he and the band had been through, he experienced an existential crisis. That, in turn, led to the 10 tracks on the band’s new album, I Love You So F***ing Much.

“I have a feeling that Dave was having a moment with trying to digest what happened and what relationships meant to him and what was important in life,” says Seaward. “He was also trapped in a room of his own in a flood in California, but a lot of [the existential crisis] stems from before that. The album is about what does it mean to have relationships with people and what is important.”

And to add to the surreality of it all, the songs’ storylines are set in space. The Flaming Lips-like album opener “Show Pony” features compelling bursts of synthesizers, and Bayley effectively raps his way through the thumping “Wonderful Nothing.”

“That’s the vibe of the album,” says Seaward. “It’s love songs about interpersonal relationships that’s set in the vastness of space.”

“The songs are about different people and different episodes,” says MacFarlane. “Whether it’s familial love or romantic love or friendships. There is no central person in it.”

The album features what press materials refer to as “retro-futuristic production.”

“The studio where we recorded was filled with these synthesizers that were built in the ’60s and ’70s,” says MacFarlane. “People use them to create the soundtracks to sci-fi films and what they thought the future would sound like. That was the environment. The studio was in East London. Dave [Bayley] rented it and set it all up himself with his own gear.”

“A Tear in Space (Airlock),” another album highlight, uses synths to make it sound like air escaping.

“For me personally, that song feels big and dark and like it’s in space,” says MacFarlane when asked about the tune. “It also feels quite dense. In space, you can be trapped in this tiny capsule, so maybe that is how that contrast works.”

“It’s about being in a relationship that is toxic and being stuck in a relationship, so the imagery is claustrophobic,” adds Seaward.

The tour that brings the band to Blossom is the group’s biggest to date, and Glass Animals have developed visuals that’ll suit the interstellar songs.

“You can expect some amazing visual stuff and lot of new and old songs,” says Seaward. “And lots of energy. It’s going to be a really serious tour. I’m very, very excited.”


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