Art-pop blazers drop an album often one-dimensional in sound and scope.
By the metrics, Glass Animals are one of the biggest bands to surface out of the UK. Jettisoning across sun-streamed pools, their art-pop decor has surpassed any expectations as their swirling single Heat Waves in 2022 pretty much broke America twice over and hit platinum in 16 other countries. Their other hits of 2014’s Gooey benched consistent streams and chart spots while How to Be a Human Being in 2016 evokes the bands’ best sounds to date.
It’s never easy to step out such a shadow of a song that reverberates around the band like a synth cadence. It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise then that Dave Bayley frontman struggled to put two-and-two together for an album with so much weight to it.
As time drifted further and further from 2020’s Dreamland, more and more fans grew apprehensive when Dave was struggling for answers… and ideas.
Oddly enough, the fourth here is signified by this backstory – an existential crisis brought about by an overwhelming success, relies on the affirmations of human connection in an ever-expanding universe.
Sadly enough for Dave and company, the album does not deliver enough to step up to the mark. The smorgasbord of sounds that come with an Glass Animals album is a guarantee at this point – electronic pop is the main protagonist, with trap beat variances and quirky synth chugs and psych-y alt-rock quips making appearances – but the fourth one here is not prime Glass Animals, I’m afraid.
On my fourth full listen, I’m still sat here flicking through the song ten-track listing and getting lost as to where the hell I am at. Either it’s trying to portray the sheer vastness of space, which is extremely effective by the way, or it’s an album rinse-and-repeat on the same four chords.
A reminder closer to home may be a late night “its us against the world, baby” drive-in cinema date, the album itself is made up of ten intimate love stories where the first 5 are remarkably tight. The first is glossy hightail Show Pony, the second is alt-mood whatthehellishappening, met with a car boot slam at the end – which I mistakenly thought was a vinyl scratch, so much so that I emailed Universal for an immediate replacement. The third is sublime header Creatures in Heaven, reminiscent of former Dreamland escapades, the fourth is gloomy wormhole Wonderful Nothing, which features some of Davey’s best vocals and lyrics alike. The fifth and final is A Tear in Space (Airlock); an addictive synth wavelength reminiscent of an unfazed and untethered astronaut floating amongst the stars. It’s got some catchy bits in there but doesn’t offer anything different to what we’re used to.
From here on, the album is a tad bit messy. A meshing of safe, unstructured half-measured ideas that round off an album that is as unstable as Davey’s thinking process during that 4-year hiatus at that rented house on a cliff in LA. You’re good to completely avoid the latter half of this album, it’s certainly not worth settling around for.
Amongst a personality-rife pop landscape of Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Chappell Roam, it looks like the musters of Glass Animals are struggling to keep up with the pop culture change.
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