Glass Animals - Dreamland

Blue Vinyl With each album, Glass Animals' bright, ear-catching music has gotten more revealing and approachable. On 2014's ZABA, their bubbly mix of indie, electronic, R&B, and hip-hop influences sounded like pop from another planet, with abstract lyrics to match (who can forget "Gooey"'s "peanut butter vibes"?). They got a little more down-to-earth with the character studies of 2016's Mercury Prize-nominated How to Be a Human Being; now, on Dreamland, singer/songwriter Dave Bayley lets his listeners get even closer by studying his own character. It's a change that was years in the making: Bayley began writing more autobiographical songs with How to Be a Human Being's closing track, "Agnes," a tribute to a dear friend whose suicide affected him deeply. When Glass Animals' drummer Joe Seaward was seriously injured in a 2018 cycling accident, the band paused as he spent months learning how to talk, walk, and play music again. During this time, Bayley sharpened his songwriting and pr