Glass Animals – I love you so damn much

Label: Polydor Records
Approved: July 19, 2024

Glass Animals’ “I Love You So F***ing Much” is what happens when you lock a pop genius in a house about to fall off a mountain and tell him to understand the universe. Spoiler alert: He doesn’t, but the attempt is pretty damn great. It’s the sonic equivalent of free-falling through the cosmos while scrolling through the camera roll—a dizzying, thrilling journey that manages to be both intimately personal and cosmically vast.

While Dreamland catapulted the band into the stratosphere with the slow success of Heat Waves, this album sees them use their newfound star power to create something truly extraordinary. Dave Bayley’s existential crisis has never sounded so good. This is Glass Animals in overdrive, shooting through space with a disco ball as a compass. It’s as if someone took Bowie’s DNA, sprinkled some Kubrick on top, and wrapped the whole thing in a glittery bow of Bayley’s neuroses.

With their fourth studio album, Oxford-based art-pop quartet Glass Animals deliver a work of astonishing ambition and emotional depth. “I Love You So F***ing Much” grapples with existential questions against a backdrop of cosmic soundscapes and intimate narrative. The result is an album that feels both timeless and contemporary, combining vintage futurism with a modern pop sensibility.

Opening track “Show Pony” sets the stage, a Beck-meets-Space Cowboy-style excursion that serves as a mission statement for the album’s exploration of love in all its chaotic glory. From there, we’re catapulted into a soundscape that blends the band’s signature wonky pop with the grandiosity of ’80s sci-fi soundtracks and the sweeping vistas of Ennio Morricone.

“Creatures in Heaven” is a highlight, its crisp guitars and wobbling synths providing the perfect backdrop for Bayley’s meditations on the gravity of fleeting moments. It’s the sound of a band comfortable enough to push their boundaries without losing sight of what made them special in the first place. Particularly impressive is “A Tear in Space,” whose orchestral swells and pulsating beat create a sense of cosmic drama that wouldn’t be out of place as a soundtrack to the next Christopher Nolan epic.

Lyrically, “I Love You So F***ing Much” finds Bayley at his most vulnerable and sensitive, grappling with separation, the weight of success, and the basic human need for connection – all while floating in a metaphorical space station, watching the world below. It’s heady stuff, but delivered with enough wit and charm to keep it from feeling heavy-handed.

Glass Animals have created something that demands – and rewards – repeated listens. It’s an album that feels like a journey that leaves you changed at the end. They’ve served up a glittering, galactic-brained feast that pushes the boundaries of what pop music can be. Get on board or stay behind – this rocket ship waits for no one.