Album review: Glass Animals – ‘I Love You So Fucking Much’ — When the horn sounds

Glass Animals embark on a space odyssey with their introspective fourth album, “I Love You So Fucking Much.”

There’s no muse like an existential crisis. The Covid-19 era delivered that in abundance with a stellar series of lockdown albums; Taylor Swift provided folky bliss on alwaysCharli XCX hosted a solo party on how I feel now, Nevertheless, Glass Animals moved towards experimental genre breaking with the Technicolor flashback dreamland.

A nostalgic revisit of frontman Dave Bayley’s childhood, ’90s classics like Capri Sun, Pepsi Blue and Froot Loops are referenced alongside video game giants like Pokemon, Grand Theft Auto and Street Fighter. But behind all the blatant references that made the hit album a magnet for enthusiastic millennials, there was an obvious poignant note. “Heat Waves” yearned for connection amid lockdown, while “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” revived the horror of a classmate bringing a gun to school.

For their follow-up album, I Love You So Fucking Much, Bayley looked to the stars for inspiration. While listening to Beach Boys love songs in the night sky, his strong desire to write a space album took over. The band’s website dropped an early teaser of the theme and was updated to read “Panic. Answer the question please” – a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The site received over 15,000 questions from fans questioning existence, the meaning of life, and the possibility of the Glass Animals performing in space. Beyond the concept, the focus is much more on human stories. Think of it as an exhibition of 10 chaotic portraits of love, painted from Bayley’s rich sonic palette.

Perhaps the most compelling song is “I Can’t Make You Fall In Love Again,” in which Bayley imagines an alternate life with a former lover. A swirling serenade for ill-fated lovers, psychedelic synths and ethereal riffs add a new dimension to the album’s most personal track. Similarly, “Show Pony” is a standout opener, depicting the beginning of a relationship to its bitter end, backed by hazy shoegaze riffs.

Bayley’s signature style is evident in the production, euphoric melodies accompanied by melancholic lyrics – but sometimes you can’t help but feel that Subscribe to is all too familiar to go the same way as dreamland. While “White Roses” rises as a stratospheric anthem of love and longing, it seems to loosely follow in the footsteps of their global hit “Heat Waves”.

Despite this exception, the latest album is no less exciting than its predecessor. Opening with solemn operatic echoes, “Wonderful Nothing” creates an ethereal soundscape that is transformed by a striking synth line that sees Bayley seeking destruction. The beachy riffs are a welcome tonic on “On The Run” amid the morbid contemplation of “faking your own death and disappearing forever.”

In that sense, the lyrical urgency is much more telling than ever, it’s clear that Bayley is learning to wear his heart on his sleeve much more often. Yet for all of his cosmic idiosyncrasies, the real magic of Subscribe to lies in the bittersweet humanity that brings it back down to earth.

Words from Oliver Evans