It’s quite a flip going from talking freely about other people’s lives to revealing the inner workings of your own, even more so when you know your friends are listening. But while some pivot from one approach to the other in seeking fresh inspiration, for Glass Animals the prompt was far more traumatic.
Having replicated their popularity across the Atlantic in Britain with the ambitious second album How To Be A Human Being, the quartet from Oxford were enjoying some down time when drummer Joe Seward was involved in a near fatal accident whilst cycling, one that left him with brain damage and unable at first to speak, walk or talk.
Lead singer Dave Bayley spent the recuperative weeks that followed at his hospital bed-side, and the precept for Dreamland subconsciously germinated with it; instead of sculpting the confessions of random strangers into stories, it was time for the observations to land closer to home.
Interspersed with audio collages taken from the Bayley household’s 90’s home movies, Dreamland’s moods are a little guarded, the hazy post-modern R&B melting into indie synth pop and back again in an effortless flow. What brings the gravity though is Bayley’s sense of helplessness and love; Domestic Bliss for instance dealing with just the opposite, refracting the story through a bystander’s eyes in fear that the next blow might be the last (‘Why’d you put up with that shit?/Why’d you go back for that kiss?/Maybe it tastes like him when you’ve got tears on your lips?’).
The singer also reflects on an adolescence spent in the toxically masculine, gender stereotyped Texas during the otherwise crystalline title-track – ‘You want something bizarre, old conceptual cars/You want girls dressed in drag, you want boys with guitars’ – part of a rush of lyrics which more widely map the record’s themes of nostalgia, regret and guilt.
These threads are poignant; over the crisp finger pops and steady beat of Space Ghost Coast To Coast the subject is a childhood friend who arrived one day at high school with a gun, while Denzel Curry’s guest spot on Tokyo Drifting jars a little, the precision stabs and hard kick drum throwing listeners out into a harsher world.
Back in the room, there’s more than one occasion in which you’re simply too filled with the need to dance versus decoding everything. On Tangerine, the urge is almost irresistible, the sort of square-hop genius long perfected by Hot Chip, an awkward sort of shame you’re happy to give totally in to and a slam dunk that Hot Sugar and Heat Waves repeat.
Given the circumstances it feels wrong to look at Dreamland that superficially, a record that deals with unintended consequences, escape routes and cast off emotional anchors whilst sounding so pristine.
Maybe when you see someone you love having so viciously unlearned all our programming the only choice is to be jealous; permission to think this abstractly has meant Glass Animals have taken a leap forward, rather than just another cautious step.
