Why you should listen to Glass Animals

It’s too easy to get home from college and stick on Ed Sheeran’s latest album for the millionth time.  With streaming sites such as Spotify becoming more readily available, there’s no excuse for not checking out some of the most talented up and coming musicians of the day. I recommend you start with Glass Animals. After 2013’s highly-commended “Leaflings” EP, the group released debut album “Zaba” in June of this year. “Zaba” has received high praise across the board. The album is experimental, catchy and often downright weird, but they deserve every bit of hype coming their way. Written and produced by the band themselves, the album is just a taster of what the band are capable of.

Immense talent is something less bands have than you’d think; often hard graft and earworming will get otherwise untalented musicians some acclaim. Happily, this is not the case for Glass Animals, as “Zaba” showcases. The album is wildly, wonderfully varied; from the richness of lead single “Gooey” to the intoxicatingly groovy “Walla Walla”, there’s a lot to chew on here. Special effects (including what the band have admitted are pets chewing on microphones) and dizzying beats abound on “Zaba”, making it one of the weirdest releases of 2014. Happily, it’s pulled off with ablomb, sounding fresh and well-crafted. Glass Animals’ musicianship is a force to be reckoned with, with pounding drums vying with delicate strings on some tracks. What makes them stand out from a dozen indie bands is their ability to mash genres together; not only are there snatches of Radiohead and Foals in their debut, but many songs wouldn’t sound out of place on a Timbaland album. There’s a smoothness and groovy quality to their music that owes a lot to modern R’nB and hip hop. Strange? Yes. Listenable? Definitely. The band’s wackiness doesn’t end at their musicianship, however. Despite several listens, I’ll admit that I still have no idea what most Glass Animals lyrics are about. A particular standout is Bayley’s crooning about “peanut butter vibes” on “Gooey”. He has said in interviews that lyrically, the album is about tackling “the humanisation of nature and human interference with nature”, so whatever keeps him happy, I suppose…odd lyrics aside, the band’s ability certainly defies their youth.

The youth of Glass Animals shows elsewhere, however. Glass Animals’ set at Electric Picnic in September was sarcastically mentioned as the “gig thousands will lie about attending” and it’s for good reason. The gig – which took place in the middle of the day on a tiny stage – was a blistering one. The four-piece may not have strobe lights or special effects, but what they lack they make up for in energy. Frontman Tom Bayley leapfrogs around the stage; he’s not a talented dancer, he doesn’t let that stop him. Onstage antics aside, the songs sound much bigger in a live setting – “Pools”, in particular, becomes a stomper of stadium proportions that one just can’t help dancing to. It takes talent to produce a decent album; it takes even more to transfer that to the stage with the ferocity and vigour that Glass Animals do. But don’t take my word for it; they play The Academy in March 2015, and tickets are a cool seventeen euro.