TRACK REVIEW: Glass Animals - Tangerine

TRACK REVIEW:

Glass Animals

Tangerine

9.0/10

The track, Tangerine, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB2tIfKpIuQ

The album, Dreamland, is available here:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/glass-animals/dreamland

RELEASE DATE:

7th August, 2020

GENRE:

Pop

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

LABEL:

Polydor

TRACKLIST:

Dreamland

Tangerine

((home movie: 1994))

Hot Sugar

((home movie: btx))

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

Tokyo Drifting

Melon and the Coconut

Your Love (Déjà Vu)

Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth

It's All So Incredibly Loud

((home movie: rockets))

Domestic Bliss

Heat Waves

((home movie: shoes on))

Helium

__________

WHILST things are still pretty tough…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Trenchard

and we are in lockdown, music is providing a sense of relief and stability. In this review, I am tackling Glass Animals. They have a new album out, Dreamland, and it is one of their best! It has been a hard time for the band, and I will discuss a terrible incident that affected Glass Animals and impacted their career. One of the things that impresses me is that, during lockdown, so many artists have been creating music and putting some fantastic stuff out there. Glass Animals’ lead, Dave Bayley, was interviewed by The Standard in April, where he talked about lockdown and creativity:

“Sitting in his home studio in Hackney, just out of two weeks’ quarantine and still a long way from his music life getting back to normal, Dave Bayley of Glass Animals is feeling optimistic. “Between me and the guys, we have a lot of ideas for how to keep things ticking — almost too many ideas,” he tells me. They include, as of next week, filling their website with downloadable music samples and images so that fans can make their own versions of Glass Animals songs and artwork. At the other end of the creative spectrum, the band have just begun selling two types of toilet roll in their online merch store, one dotted with the four Oxford school friends’ faces, the other printed with the words “Ass Glanimals”.

“I think everyone’s in an interesting headspace,” he continues. “Maybe the stress and the anxiety of all this, plus the isolation, could be quite healthy for people’s creativity in a weird way. Or maybe people have just run out of weed and started to be more productive”.

An accident involving Glass Animals’ drummer, Joe Seaward, almost threatened to derail the band and set them back. It came out of the blue, and it was a real blow for the Oxford-formed group. I remember hearing about the accident a couple of years back and being pretty shocked. One cannot really predict things like this, so Glass Animals had to adapt when the accident happened.

Now, a couple of years after it happened, things seem a lot better, even if Seaward is still feeling the effects. Glass Animals were interviewed by NME earlier in the year, and they were asked about the accident and how they have adapted since:

“It feels like a miracle to be talking to Joe Seaward, drummer of Oxford’s indie quartet Glass Animals. His bandmates tell NME it is a miracle. Seaward himself is certain it is. “I think that my accident shook everyone to the core,” he says, balancing his head in his hand, his fingertips tracing the outline of a deep scar on his skull. “Everyone was very close to losing a friend, a brother, a boyfriend, a son and a bandmate.” His eyes fill with tears.

In July 2018, Seaward was hit by a truck while riding his bike in Dublin. As well as a severely broken leg, Seaward suffered brain damage after a complex skull fracture: he required two lengthy, life-threatening operations to repair the damage. On waking, he found that he had no short-term memory. He couldn’t walk, talk, eat, read or write. “Everything that made me… me was taken away,” Seaward says. “And I couldn’t even remember why”.

It’s a bitter time for the group. After two years of rehabilitation, Seaward had returned to performing following a series of warm-up gigs earlier this year. Bayley says that being back on stage in February was the greatest feeling: “It felt like a miracle and it was a miracle really. At one of our first shows in Manchester, everything clicked again. I remember just being so thankful that we could still do this. I couldn’t stop thinking about how lucky we were”.

When any group is rocked by an unexpected setback, everything takes a backseat. I can only imagine what it was like for Glass Animals when they heard the news and what their lives were like; how they managed to keep going and change plans. Although their new album has been made with their drummer, I think the accident of 2018 has impacted their approach and feeds into Dreamland.

It is pleasing the band are a unit again, and that they are on the road to recovery and strength. Before moving along, I wanted to stick on the subject of Seaward’s accident and what the rehabilitation process was like. In this interview from Entertainment Weekly, the group talked about the period after the accident:

“For the 30-year-old singer, who first met the Glass Animals drummer when he was 13, the assuredness of his friend’s rehabilitation arrived after playing music for him a few days following brain surgery. When “Zombie” by Fela Kuti started up, Seaward began to tap his foot in time with the music. The moment served as one of the dummer’s only memories in the hospital. Concentration and recall were two of the biggest things impacted by his operation. But with steady progress and help from his bandmates, Seaward was able to recover quickly; he started walking again about a week later. Yet the dichotomy between the mental and physical recovery was clear from the outset. He had to be told multiple times that he’d even broken his leg.

“I was walking across the hospital thinking, ‘This f—ing hurts!’ Seaward says. “And I said to the nurse, ‘This is really hard’ and she said ‘You broke your femur’ and I remember thinking, ‘What the f—k?! Why didn’t anyone tell me?!’ They said ‘We did try, you just have no recollection of it.’” His bandmates were checking in the whole time. They even drove Seaward home from the hospital to Oxford in a tour van when they were supposed to be playing shows in America. “It was all very ironic,” MacFarlane says with a laugh”.

To sort of shift things in terms of direction, I think one of their band members being involved in such a horrible event has altered how they approach music and what they write. How to Be a Human Being of 2016 is very different to Dreamland, and I think the lyrics have changed notably. I have heard all of Dreamland, and one still hears all the hallmarks of Glass Animals’ sound, but one can tell that the past few years has really altered their mindset and outlook.

When Dave Bayley was interviewed by DIY, he discussed how Seaward’s accident was very potent regarding how he approached songwriting and what/who he wrote about:

“This process of complete life re-evaluation has also changed the outlook of their musical direction. As the band's lead songwriter and producer, the singer was already working on new ideas for another character-driven record when the accident occurred, sharply altering his lyrical perspective.

"I've always liked quite conceptual projects, and I did have a theme in my head for this new record; it was all about happiness and how that manifests," he explains. "But then suddenly, Joe was in the hospital. I obviously spent a lot of time there, and you're worried and exhausted and surrounded by a lot of dark things, and it makes you feel very reflective. You think about all the mistakes you've made, all the shitty things you've done… I think that's when the more personal approach started. I just started asking the questions that I asked of people on the last record about myself a bit, and this new record has evolved to become more introspective."

Looking inwards hasn't compromised any of the band's trademark upbeat sonic energy. Latest single ‘Your Love (Déjà Vu)’ is a slinky, slippery number that sits comfortably among their best work, summoning early ‘00s R&B to craft something that feels effortlessly Glass Animals. Once again finding himself drawn towards the personal, its origins began from his work outside of the band - producing songs for a range of pop and hip hop artists including Joey Bada$$, Flume, 6lack and Suzi Wu”.

I am bringing in a lot of articles and interviews, as it is interesting hearing the band speaking about their past and how the music of today has been affected thus. I am keen to come to my review of Tangerine but, before then, I want to investigate a few more themes that are important when illuminating Glass Animals in 2020 and Dreamland. Before moving on, I want to bring in another exert from The Standard, where Bayley continued on the theme of new lyrical perspective and how he is delving more into the personal:

“Describing the new music the band have already been playing on tour, he says he’s been writing from more of a personal perspective than ever before. On the previous album, he was telling stories of strangers he’d met on the road, apart from the ballad Agnes, which is about the death of a friend. He struggles to perform it live sometimes, he admits, but it is probably their best song, so it’s hardly surprising he might try to tap into that area again. “The new stuff is very personal, and I’m still a bit weird about it. I constantly feel quite selfish. Singing these songs the first couple of times, they really pulled on the nerves”.

I have talked about the past and how Glass Animals have had to move forward whilst dealing with a tragedy, but their new album is out, and has already gained a lot of positivity from the press. I think a new lyrical perspective and Dave Bayley revisiting his childhood are important factors on Dreamland. If one compares How to Be a Human Being, and Dreamland, there are definite changes one can detect. I am going to bring in interview text where the band have discussed a new lyrical path and the themes that define Dreamland, but I want to source from The Independent, where Dave Bayley talked about his childhood and what it was like growing up in a small town in Texas:

“Compared to its predecessor, the Mercury Prize-shortlisted How to Be a Human Being, Dreamland is autobiographical, shot through with memories of early childhood growing up in the small city of College Station, Texas. It tackles everything from formative relationships to masculinity, in particular the toxic expectations of young boys that Bayley – who is sensitive, emotionally intelligent, and occasionally quite shy – was confronted with. There are glimmering synths that rocket overhead like shooting stars, trippy hip-hop beats, bossa nova rhythms, warped electric guitar lines, the brassy horns of their 2019 track “Tokyo Drifting”, and a fantastic sample of “Deep Shadows” by Sixties Michigan soul singer Little Ann. All of this is interspersed with audio from home movies of Bayley’s youth, augmenting the album’s bittersweet theme of lost innocence.

“You don’t realise until later how dark it all is,” he says, of childhood gender stereotyping. “It’s so ingrained – being told to play American football and basketball and hide your feelings, and be this kind of macho superhero. That’s definitely not what I was, and I felt really s****y for not being that.” He addresses this on Dreamland song “Space Ghost Coast to Coast”, about one of his childhood best friends.

“We discovered everything together,” he says. “Dr Dre, Eminem... we used to pull up the aerial on our boombox to catch different radio stations.” When Bayley moved to England, aged 13, he and his friend drifted apart. Some time later, he heard the news that the friend had been caught trying to bring a gun into a local school. “The world can change people in ways you never thought were possible,” he says. “We need to start challenging that. It’s f***ing dangerous”.

If the accident of Joe Seaward influenced Glass Animals had a profound affect on Dreamland and how they approach music now, I also think that Bayley’s childhood and earliest memories are also very important. The band have tackled music from a character perspective on previous albums, and there has been a slight reluctance to write from a personal viewpoint. Maybe this is to do with Bayley and how he was raised. It can be quite hard putting yourself on the page, and you have to go on stage singing these songs in front of strangers. I can appreciate why it is not easy to open up in songs, and how a more detached perspective was preferable. Dreamland is a real evolution for Glass Animals, and I wonder whether the band will continue down this same path for future albums. I did not know about Bayley’s personal life and childhood before researching for Dreamland. In this NME interview, Bayley talked more about his early life and what it was like for him:

“‘Dreamland’ sees Bayley revisit his childhood. Going back to that time, he began to understand where his reluctance to write about himself came from: “I was brought up in Texas where you’re born male, you’re born with a penis, you play American football, you don’t talk about your feelings. That’s embedded into the psyche of men there from a very young age. People want you to be a hero, to be strong. To show any sort of vulnerability was a weakness. The title of the album refers to the fact I’d often totally zone out in class at school and start dreaming of weird things just to escape. I felt trapped.”

Vulnerability is palpable on ‘Dreamland’. It encompasses the full spectrum of human emotion on dreamlike songs that soar with lightness and nostalgia (Bayley recorded many of the songs on vintage equipment) but are often much darker lyrically. While still retaining the tropical tinge of their early Alt-J-meets-Hot Chip leanings, ‘Dreamland’ sees Glass Animals more confident in their musical identity, mixing styles assuredly, rather than tentatively, as in the past”.

I do not mean to stick on this theme, but I think many people approach reviews and music from a very narrow perspective. It is great to talk about the music how it makes you feel, but I love to hear context and factors that can direct a song or album. Although Dreamland is a more personal and revealing album than its predecessors, it is also a lot of fun and has a huge amount of spirit! I think that Glass Animals are tackling new sounds and genres on their third studio album. In this DIY interview, we learn more about the sonic and thematic developments on Dreamland:

“The album is chock full of playful melodies and pre-school sounds, harking back to Bayley’s formative years. Take the bubbly synth refrain and xylophonic chimes of ‘Hot Sugar’, or the sweetly naive fantasy of two bickering pieces of fruit on ‘Melon and the Coconut’. And then there’s the endless pop culture references that litter almost every song: The Karate Kid, GI Joe dolls, ‘90s video games like Doom and Quake. The album is anchored, meanwhile, by Bayley’s mother’s voice - a recurring presence through a series of interludes ripped from home videos.

“Through all the ups and downs, the weird and confusing shit, she was always there to stabilise things,” says Dave. In this context, these audio snippets feel like a kind of hand-holding device that guides the listener through the childhood traumas and heavier subtexts that appear elsewhere.

Songs like ‘Helium’ and ‘Heat Waves’ explore past relationships with a heavy heart, while the brooding lament of ‘It’s All So Incredibly Loud’ peaks as Bayley repeatedly cries “I’m breaking down”. But the album’s darkest moments go even deeper. “I feel like I’ve gone really far into all the problems, torn all the plasters off, and those wounds are just there, all bloody, and that’s it,” he explains. Sometimes it’s liberating, but at other moments it’s more about acknowledging that “things are pretty fucked up”.

I am going to move forward in a second, but I want to end this section by discussing the band adopting new sounds and stepping into new genres. Not to say that Glass Animals’ first two albums were limited, but I think Dreamland is their biggest and more varied step yet. Reverting back to that DIY magazine interview, and the band’s collaboration with Denzel Curry on Tokyo Drifting is a particularly big moment:

“Landing a collaboration with Florida rapper Denzel Curry on recent single ‘Tokyo Drifting’ was undoubtedly a coup in legitimising Glass Animals’ genre-hybridising approach; with its trap-style hi-hats, rap verses and booming, brassy refrain, it almost borders on grime. But unlike Bayley’s other collabs in the hip hop world, many of which landed on his doorstep after the band’s 2014 single ‘Gooey’ became an unexpected hit in America, getting Curry involved took a lot of work. “Joey Bada$$ had got in touch when we were in New York playing some summer show in Central Park, and 6lack had reached out by just sending me a bunch of fire emojis on Twitter. But with Denzel it wasn’t easy,” he remembers. “I basically nagged him over the internet via every avenue possible until he replied. It turned out he doesn’t even check his own social media, but one of my friends played him the beat and he was like, ‘This is sick, what is this?!’.”

Dave is visibly still chuffed to have pulled it off. As the conversation drifts towards the album’s physical release, he unexpectedly brandishes a Denzel Curry nunchuk at the web cam, before listing off all kinds of merchandising miscellanea that the band have in the making: “We’ve got a cereal bowl coming, we’ve got spoons, PEZ dispensers with our heads on them… all these things I liked as a kid”.

On Dreamland, there is a real mixture of the fun and retro. There is the more oblique in terms of lyrics, but there is also the affecting and personal. I wanted to talk about Tangerine, as it is a natural highlight, and I do love the sound of the song and the images the lyrics project. Building off of a computerised beat and this real feeling of nostalgia, Bayley steps to the microphone and lets us into the song’s world: “As cold as an old ice cream sandwich/As focused as Mr. Miyagi/You poke at your phone postin' aerial photos/Of you with your smoothie”. Many bands and artists have discussed people being distracted and the addiction of technology, but none do it quite like Glass Animals! Bayley almost raps the lyrics as he pulls together these weird and wonderful images. I have always liked how Glass Animals approach songwriting, and you get this very fresh and original style. It seems that our hero cannot make the girl happy (“'Cause you got issues with your daddy”), and we are getting a peek into a relationship that has some issues and differences. On paper, the two seem very different, and there are some definite tensions. The chorus sees the hero in a more revealing mood: “But I wish I could show you more of yourself/I wish I could make you somebody else/But I left it way too late/Are you stuck in your own ways?”. In terms of vocal intonation, there is little in the chorus that suggests Bayley is regretful or that vulnerable, but there is an urgency to be found. Glass Animals are in a more reflective and personal frame on Dreamland, and it is interesting hearing a different side to them. There are some twisted electronic sounds and that beat; the band have their own sonic voice, and I really love the composition on Tangerine. There is pleading and desire from our hero – “Hands, knees, please/Tangerine, sugar, honey, sweet/Got what I need, Tangerine”-, and it does seem that he used to know this person well years ago, but things have changed recently.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ian Laidlaw

Lines like “You let the Devil in/And all you talk is money, money/Money, money, money” suggests that a sweetheart has succumbed to the lure of something shallow, but I look in a wider sense and wonder whether the song is about something more general and political. The chorus has this charm and energy that is hard to resist, and I do really like how there is a constant energy and flow to Tangerine. Maybe there was a sense of togetherness and future years ago, but something has happened that has altered the dynamic. “You've been dreamless and sleepin' for years/Super-clear since the late-1990s/You only look at me properly now/When you're drunk, watchin' movies” is an interesting image, and it sort of makes me curious whether we are talking about a romantic relationship that has gone through the motions, or it is a friendship that has sort of hit the rocks. The repeated mantra of “I'm beggin', hands, knees, please/Tangerine, come on back to me/You got what I need, Tangerine” gains extra momentum and importance the more it is said, and I wonder whether Tangerine is the nickname for his lover, or whether it is something else. The way Glass Animals write has always intrigued me. We get all of these terrific and rich lines that take the imagination in different directions. I think there is a lot more in the way of the personally raw and vulnerable on songs like Tangerine. Whilst we might not get a lot of background regarding this relationship and why things have gone awry, I think every listener can sort of tell their own story and have their own take on the song. I really like it, and it is one of the best cuts from Dreamland – and it is my favourite song of the record. It is great to have Glass Animals back and putting out incredible music!

Dreamland is a huge album from Glass Animals, and it has come off of the back of a particularly tough couple of years. The band probably did not think that they would continue on after Joe Seaward’s accident in 2018. They have shouldered that huge setback, and they have come through the other side renewed and more focused than ever. Dreamland is one of their finest albums, and it is another great album in a year that has seen more than its fair share. I am not sure what the band have planned regarding gigs going forward, and they will probably be looking at 2021 for any realistic promotion and exposure. I am glad to see Glass Animals are still together and making music. Not that Seaward’s accident has been all bad: in terms of lyrics and sonic direction, I think the band have forced themselves to make changes and widen their horizons. If you have not bought Dreamland, then go and get it – the link is at the top of this review -, and witness one of this year’s best releases! I am a fan of the band and, whilst I like their character songs, the more personal approach works really well on Dreamland. It is good to have them back and let us hope that the future is more stability and less fraught than things have been since 2018. I will finish now, but it has been great assessing their new music, and I am glad that a lot of other people have been digging Dreamland. On their third studio album, the band have created…