Market with Apple Music

August 25, 2016 at PDT

How to Be a Human Being

11 Tracks

August 6, 2020 at PDT

Dreamland

In July 2018, Glass Animals drummer Joe Seaward was riding his bicycle in Dublin when he was hit by a truck and nearly died. After spending weeks in the hospital unable to speak or move, he learned how to walk, talk, and read again while his body healed. For his bandmates, the experience was excruciating and profound, the kind that made frontman Dave Bayley “zoom out” and ask existential questions about trauma, art, and mortality. “I started thinking back to stories from my childhood in Texas before my family moved to England,” he tells Apple Music. The experience wasn’t necessarily pleasant. “Your brain goes to weird places.”

Bayley doesn’t particularly enjoy writing about himself, but wound up circling his own memories for the band’s introspective third album—specifically, those emotionally charged moments when innocence is lost. Strung together by interludes ripped from his family’s home videos and production inspired by early-aughts hip-hop (the soundtrack of his youth), Dreamland is a deeply personal account of Bayley’s journey into adulthood that chases an ever-looming question: “How did I get here?” Below, the London-based musician opens up about the stories behind a few standout songs.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast
“I’ve tried to tell this story somewhat vaguely because I hate the idea of revealing someone's identity, and this person in particular has rebuilt themselves, which is an incredible thing. This song is about a very good friend I had growing up, back in those formative years when I was first discovering hip-hop—Eminem, Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, all of whom I tried to channel in the production—and also discovering myself. We went to camp together, we got into trouble together, but we were both always nervous and shy about everything. There was gentleness to it all. When my family moved to England, we fell out of touch, and a couple of years later I found out that he’d brought a gun to school and tried to do a shooting. He got caught on the way in, no one died, but it affected me. It didn't add up in my head. He was the person I watched cartoons with and played kickball with... I couldn’t understand it. It was the first time I really understood how much things can change, that people you love can do things that you won't understand. It was a breaking of innocence.”

It's All So Incredibly Loud
“This song is about saying something that you know is going to really hurt somebody—something they'll never forgive you for and that will probably make them hate you—and the three seconds right after you say those words. That silence that feels like the loudest fucking thing ever. I began with a particular moment in mind, but then I just started thinking back on all the times I've been...well, maybe not a dick, but close. All the times I've hurt somebody, and sitting with what that felt like. It’s quite abstract compared to the rest of the songs on the record because I wanted it to apply to a lot of situations.”

Domestic Bliss
“This song was sparked by one of my very first memories—the first where I can trace the whole sequence of events. I was maybe six. I went to my friend’s house after school one day, and it was a weird place. There were dogs in cages, wild cats in cages; I didn't really understand it. We weren’t allowed in the house—we always played in this woodsy area nearby—but sometimes there’d be loud shouting from inside. My friend would turn to me and be like, 'Oh god, she's going to come out crying.' And his mom would come out of the house in tears with blood on her nose and things like that. I remember it hitting me, just that it was so bad. And then we'd all get back in the truck and she'd take me home. I guess the song is about the helplessness you feel in situations like that. When you know it’s bad but also that you’re too young to really get it.”

Heat Waves
“It began with a personal experience that everyone has had: A friend starts dating someone and slowly, they change the way they dress. And then the way they talk. And then everything. Eventually it gets to the point where you’re like, ‘Who is that? Where did my friend go?’ Well, this song is about realizing that it’s happened to you, that it's you that's changed. You've become someone that you aren't. I was trying to figure out whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but ultimately I think it's about hitting a wall—a point where you can't change anymore or you’ll lose the foundation of who you are. You’ll become an attachment for this other person. It’s happened to me and I’ve seen it happen to so many friends. And there’s a moment when you see your reflection and you're like, ‘Oh, fuck.’ All of the lyrics play into that—mirages, hallucinations, things like that.”

Helium
“This is the only song that gets at any resolution and isn’t groundbreaking. It basically says that we have to accept that we're all doing the best we can. We're doing it on top of tattered foundations with all these rocky cracks—because it’s never perfect, right?—but we’re trying. We build what we can, we make a life, we do our best. And that’s just fine. By this point in the writing process, I had become more comfortable being confused about everything. I had stopped searching for answers or wishing I’d done everything differently. It was a relief to get to that point. There are plenty of times when you look back and realize you got it wrong, but you have to forgive yourself, because you’ve probably, hopefully, become a better person for it. People spend so much time trying to be a kid forever or go back to their youth, but the whole reason these memories even matter to us is because of the wisdom we’ve gained from them. Even if we could go back, we probably wouldn’t, because they’ve made us who we are.”

16 Tracks

November 12, 2019 at PST

Tokyo Drifting - Single

1 Trackfalse

June 5, 2014 at PDT

ZABA (Deluxe)

Though they hail from the UK, Glass Animals thrive in hot, humid environs. The Oxford outfit’s 2014 debut feels like a late-night rainforest cruise into uncharted territory, powered by tropical grooves and ayahuasca-induced weirdness. Even as he guides you through the drum-circle ceremony of “Walla Walla” and jungle rumble of “Pools,” singer David Bayley remains a smooth tour operator, countering the percussive propulsion with a cool, melodic sensibility that’s equal parts James Blake and Thom Yorke.

15 Tracks

July 18, 2024 at PDT

I Love You So F***ing Much

Glass Animals’ 2020 album, Dreamland, and its global sleeper hit, “Heat Waves,” gave the group a level of chart-topping, multi-platinum success most bands can’t even imagine. Yet, having put the record out during the pandemic, that newfound status only served to heighten feelings of alienation for band-leader Dave Bayley. “It was this amazing thing that we never expected, but we couldn’t be part of it,” he says. “It didn’t feel real, so there was this huge sense of detachment. It started this existential crisis.”

Touring the record under strict COVID protocols didn’t help matters, and when the band came off tour, Bayley was struck down with the virus and forced to self-isolate. Alone in a rented house in the LA hills as storms raged across California, however, Bayley looked down on the twinkling lights of Los Angeles and the eureka moment that sparked I Love You so F***ing Much came to him.

“I’d tried to make a space record before but it came out too cold. It didn’t feel human or relatable enough,” he says of his plan to make a grand, sci-fi-sounding album. “Being in that house literally put it in perspective. I looked out and saw all these people walking around, the families and people in the gas stations having an argument. You see these human relationships and how complex and important they are and you realize how powerful those human interactions we have are. Those relationships and those feelings are much bigger than everything else. The little things right in front of you are actually more important.”

The result is a record that combines the epic scope of Bayley’s sci-fi production visions with some of his most personal songwriting to date. From opener “Show Pony”’s solar-flare reflections on love, through the futuristic claustrophobia of “A Tear in Space (Airlock)” to the gentle landing of final track, “Lost in the Ocean,” I Love You so F***ing Much deftly encapsulates the human condition and our place in the universe. Discover more as Bayley talks us through it, track by track.

“Show Pony”
“We all build up these ideas of love when we’re growing up, before we even know what love is. We experience it and absorb it and see it and we build this fairytale idea of love and an idea of what relationships should be. You build these ideas of love in your head before you experience it properly. This song is a summary of that blueprint that I would’ve had at a young age—about how I might have perceived love—and put into a short story. It’s almost like a table of contents for the album.”

“whatthehellishappening?”
“At the time I wrote it, I thought it was about what’s in the lyrics, which is when you find yourself in a situation and you’re just being pulled along for the ride. It’s quite overwhelming, but you find a joy in it. Or maybe you’re trying to convince yourself there’s a joy in it. Then, I realized, after finishing it and getting back to England from America, that actually there’s another angle to it, which is that it’s similar to being thrown into the boot of a car. There’s a parallel there between me being stuck in that house and being in the boot of this car and being helpless. In the lyrics, it touches on how complex that situation is, that that helplessness is actually amazing. You’re not calling the shots and there’s a thrill and an excitement to that. You don’t have to make any decisions. There’s no more responsibility. You can be who you want, say what you want, be completely and utterly open and make any mistakes that you want. You’ve got an excuse because you’ve been kidnapped and shoved into a car.”

“Creatures in Heaven”
“This song is really personal. I was pushing myself to be tender and vulnerable and just lay it out as nakedly as possible. It’s meant to show that these tiny moments can completely change your life. It can be one second where you didn’t say something and you regret it for the rest of your life and it changes every decision you make in a similar context forever. It’s trying to say how fragile and vulnerable those moments are. It’s an emotional one. For me, it’s a very personal story, but I hope people can relate different instances of their own life to it.”

“Wonderful Nothing”
“It is about hate as a type of love. It’s a very complex thing. To hate someone you have to love them and to love someone means that you might hate parts of them. They’re strongly linked and strongly attached. I think with that complexity and two-sidedness came a complex arrangement and a very two-sided arrangement that keeps flip-flopping [in the track]. It explores the duality and the two different sides of that. That was the idea, I tried to have a bit of fun with it.”

“A Tear in Space (Airlock)”
“I wanted it to sound like the air was being sucked out of the song. It’s all about being pushed into the cracks and falling through them and being forgotten. This is super nerdy, but there’s this sidechain compression thing that squeezes everything and it feels like pressure. It can be a really naff production technique that is overused in a lot of modern pop. I had to have a reason to justify it and I think I got away with it because of the context in the lyrics and the story and the song. It emphasizes that side of the lyrics.”

“I Can’t Make You Fall in Love Again”
“This is probably the rawest moment on the album. I was so uncomfortable with it that I didn’t want to put it on the album for a bit. It reminded me of certain things that are not so nice to think about. It’s about exactly what it says on the tin. It’s quite a blunt title in that respect. It’s about how you can’t fix everything and no matter how hard you might want love to exist somewhere, it’s not really a choice. It’s not up to you. It’s quite a tough realization.”

“How I Learned to Love the Bomb”
“It’s about realizing that there’s a side to someone that you’ve never really seen before and it comes out and it’s fucking petrifying because it’s dark. You’re just asking yourself this question: Actually, does it excite you? Are you a psychopath for getting a bit of a thrill from it? Are they a bit of a psychopath for hiding this from you? Who’s the psychopath here? We’re all psychopaths. I don’t know if that’s the conclusion, but it is asking the question. On one hand, it is absolutely thrilling, and on the other hand this is dangerous territory, you should fucking run.”

“White Roses”
“‘I Can’t Make You Fall in Love Again’ is about you being unable to change someone’s mind and ‘White Roses’ is about someone not being able to change your feelings, even though you really want to. You want to give them everything that you can and you want them to be happy and you do love them and you think they’re the best thing in the world, but there’s something inside of you that doesn’t feel it. It’s almost like if the person who ‘I Can’t Make You Fall in Love Again’ is about had written ‘White Roses’ and they’re facing each other.”

“On the Run”
“There’s a line in it: ‘Thanks for all the fish…’ Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were a big influence on the record [‘So long, and thanks for all the fish’ is a line from the book and became the title of the fourth novel in the series]. I love that book and I love the old radio show. The soundtrack for that used a lot of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop magic, and I actually used a lot of the equipment that they used to make sound effects on this album. I bought a few of the synths and these crazy space-age-looking beasts. The whole idea of the sound of the record was to get all this stuff that was used in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s to make futuristic sounds. I’ve got too much of that stuff now and it never works. I spent a lot of time with a soldering iron trying to get things working, but it’s worth it in the end.”

“Lost in the Ocean”
“It’s the conclusion that we’ve come through all this. The spaceship has literally landed in the ocean. It’s a letter to myself in that way. It’s not necessarily about understanding everything that’s happened, it’s more just saying that it’s all chaos and that’s quite exciting. It’s a good thing to remember that these little things are there and they’ll never go away. They’re always going to ground you and bring you back to earth in the end.”

10 Tracks

June 4, 2014 at PDT

Zaba

Though they hail from the UK, Glass Animals thrive in hot, humid environs. The Oxford outfit’s 2014 debut feels like a late-night rainforest cruise into uncharted territory, powered by tropical grooves and ayahuasca-induced weirdness. Even as he guides you through the drum-circle ceremony of “Walla Walla” and jungle rumble of “Pools,” singer David Bayley remains a smooth tour operator, countering the percussive propulsion with a cool, melodic sensibility that’s equal parts James Blake and Thom Yorke.

11 Tracks