Album Review: Glass Animals - 'I Love You So Fucking Much’
Glass Animals journey on a space odyssey with their introspective fourth record ‘I Love You So Fucking Much’.
There is no muse quite like an existential crisis. The Covid-19 era delivered this in spades with a stellar line-up of lockdown albums; Taylor Swift created folky bliss on evermore, Charli XCX threw a solo party on how I’m feeling now, yet Glass Animals leaned into experimental genre-bending territory with the technicolour throwback Dreamland.
A nostalgic retread of frontman Dave Bayley’s childhood, classic 90’s staples like Capri Sun, Pepsi Blue and Froot Loops get a mention alongside video game titans like Pokemon, Grand Theft Auto and Street Fighter. Though behind all the glaring references that made the hit record a honeypot for buzzing millennials, there was poignancy hidden in plain sight. ‘Heat Waves’ yearned for connection in the midst of lockdown while ‘Space Ghost Coast to Coast’ relived the horror of a classmate bringing a gun to school.
For their follow-up ‘I Love You So Fucking Much’, Bayley looked up to the stars for inspiration. Listening to love songs by The Beach Boys overlooking the night sky, his strong desire to write a space album took the wheel. Dropping an early tease of the theme, the band’s website was updated to read ‘Panic. Answer the question please’ – a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The site received over 15,000 questions from fans questioning existence, the meaning of life and the chance of Glass Animals performing in space. Beyond the concept, there is a much larger focus on human stories, consider it an exhibition of 10 messy portraits of love painted from Bayley’s rich sonic palette.
Perhaps the most compelling cut is ‘I Can’t Make You Fall In Love Again’ where Bayley imagines an alternative life with a former lover. A swirling serenade to star-crossed lovers, psychedelic synths and celestial riffs elevates the most personal track of the album. In similar fashion, ‘Show Pony’ is a stellar opener that charts the beginning of a relationship to its bitter end, backed by fuzzy shoegaze riffs.
Production wise the Bayley signature is there, euphoric lilts backed by melancholy lyrics – but on occasion you can’t help but feel that ILYSFM is all too familiar, walking the same path as Dreamland. While ‘White Roses’ soars as a stratospheric anthem of love and longing, it seemed to loosely follow the footprints of their global hit ‘Heat Waves’.
In spite of this exception, the latest album is by no means no less thrilling than its predecessor. ‘Wonderful Nothing’ began with solemn operatic echoes and creates a heavenly soundscape that is transformed by a formidable synth line that finds Bayley longing for destruction. The beachy riffs are a welcome tonic in ‘On The Run’ amidst the morbid contemplation to “fake your own death and fuck off forever”.
On this note the lyrical urgency is far more revealing than ever before, it’s clear that Bayley is learning to wear his heart on his sleeve far more often. Yet for all of its cosmic quirks, the real magic of ILYSFM lies in the bittersweet humanity that pulls it back down to earth.
Words by Oliver Evans
