Dream animals

Glass Animals are a weird bunch of, well, animals. Having been at it for a decade now, the British band managed to grow and experiment outside its original electro-pop roots to offer a wildly eclectic new album...

Oxford’s Glass Animals are back in this rather strange year of ours with their third album, aptly entitled Dreamland. And it’s no new iteration on the same formula here: they’ve grown and come up with something that is intriguingly multi-faceted and musically layered. Take it as a (strong) compliment.

Starting with the obvious: how do you even call their musical style nowadays? Dave Bayley, their super-talented frontman/composer/producer, first brought in a rather straight Indie pop/rock sound, albeit of the more sophisticated kind. Then, much in the way their musical cousins Alt-J did slightly before them, they increasingly expanded on that base, adding more electronic elements, more RnB stylings, more mainstream Pop bits… To the point that it’s become easier to say what their music is not: Heavy Metal, for one…

Their new album is indeed a wonderful mess of sonic mixture, blending together Radiohead (just listen to “It’s all incredibly loud” or “Helium”, which closes the LP), a lot of modern day RnB-infused Pop in tracks like “Waterfalls coming out your mouth”, Psychedelic Pop a la Tame Impala with “Tangerine” or “Hot Sugar”… all to the way to a straight Hip-hop collaboration with US-based Denzel Curry on the genre-bending “Tokyo Drifting“, which also happened to be the release’s introductory single. Way to give a preview of what was to come our way…

The Radiohead reference is no overkill here: they are clearly aiming for the same kind of ambitious musical experimentations their illustrious elders were up to back in the 2000’s. Same goes with the RnB and Hip-Hop flavors the album is filled with: they are entirely conscious and deliberate. Besides Denzel Curry’ appearance, many of the tracks here have obviously been produced with Drake-ish, Juice WRLD-ish or Post Malone-ish intent (pick your favorite artist), which interestingly does not dilute the band’s electronic-pop origins, instead adding layers on top of it.

In many ways, Glass Animals managed to create an eminently contemporary album, artfully mixing many of the sounds of our times in one jam-packed piece of work. Way to go guys, we can’t wait to hear what’s next…