Review Summary: Blown glass.
Glass Animals, for better and for worse, have always been a band in search of an identity. Their 2014 debut LP
ZABA presented an intoxicating blend of neo-psychedelia and trip-hop, and displayed both a keen ear for pop hooks and an omnivorous diet of influences, from smoky, big-city boom-bap to ersatz afrobeats. Yet, I could never shake the feeling that it was lacking some X-factor, that the insanely groovy beats and trippy atmospherics all revolved around a void where some missing tool in the band's arsenal should be. They had an impressive bag of tricks, to be sure, but it seemed like Dave Bayley and co. were always searching for themselves somewhere in that bag, and never quite finding anything substantial.
Their 2016 follow-up
How to Be a Human Being, paradoxically, proved much more assured and compelling through an even less personal approach, presenting a series of character studies inspired by oddballs and misfits the band had met on tour. By spending an album trying on outside perspectives and seeing how they fit, Glass Animals were able to approach their songwriting from an angle that allowed their strengths to shine and concealed their weaknesses even further; their slight impersonality had become at worst ignorable, and at best part of their appeal.
Now, after an auto accident almost killed their drummer and a global pandemic scuttled their upcoming live dates, Glass Animals have delivered
Dreamland, simultaneously their most personal and most frustratingly anonymous work yet. As the giant purple head on the album cover clearly telegraphs,
Dreamland is decisively The Dave Bayley Show. Whereas
How to be… scattered its focus across a dozen colorful characters, this album is about exactly one guy- and as it turns out, Bayley is just not a terribly interesting guy. Songs like “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” and “Waterfall Coming Out of Your Mouth” may lay the pop-culture references and quirky descriptors on thick, but none of it feels like it properly adds up to a person. As a lyricist, Bayley has a bad habit of vacillating between bland, overused pop-isms and turns of phrase so bizarre they can take you out of a song entirely, and much of Glass Animals’ best material shows him finding something of a happy medium between the two extremes (“Life Itself”, “Pools”, “Agnes”). Here, there’s very little to bridge the gap between heard-it-a-hundred-times platitudes like “I wish I could make you somebody else” and bonkers weirdness-for-weirdness’-sake like “Clap, clap, you’re a clever, clever cookie now”, and the space in between, where some kind of personal connection might be forged, is left conspicuously empty.
While
Dreamland is a noticeable step down from their previous work lyrically, Glass Animals, as per usual, are mostly focused on interesting atmospheres, infectious choruses and killer grooves. If they deliver the jams, the lyrical gaffes can be forgiven- but it’s here that
Dreamland really falters. Far too much of this album finds Glass Animals starting to melt into the same indistinct, goopy monogenre that’s already swallowed Panic! at the Disco, Maroon 5, Portugal. the Man, and a dozen other bands that used to sound like anything other than each other. “Tokyo Drifting” is dominated by a gallingly standard trap beat and Bayley’s clumsy attempts to ape a Travis Scott-esque vocal style, only slightly redeemed by Denzel Curry’s energetic guest verse. “Melon and the Coconut” is a blurry, desaturated wash of bland synth tones and ugly autotune. “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” features a vocal melody so Glass-Animals-by-numbers that on first listen I was sure it had been lifted directly from an earlier track of theirs, and “Heat Waves” is almost wholly lacking in anything to set it apart from the last 3 or so years of alternative radio hits. For all their flaws, I would never have said Glass Animals didn’t consistently bring a unique sound to the table, and arguably
Dreamland’s biggest disappointment is its failure to bring much other than modern pop and indie’s most overused cliches.
That’s a lot of harsh words for this album, given that I do think there are moments here that work, and work well. “Your Love (Deja Vu)” combines a clattering beat, thick, rumbling bass, and instantly earworm-y guitar and synth licks into a funky banger that could almost go toe-to-toe with anything off
ZABA. “It’s All So Incredibly Loud” pairs Bayley’s signature airy croon with a shimmery, synthwave-inspired instrumental for a very effective slow-burn. And “Domestic Bliss” and “Helium” both manage to incorporate a distinctly Glass Animals feel with a much more contemplative, restrained tone than their usual M.O. Perhaps most importantly, while there’s nothing that matches the trip-pop bliss of “Pork Soda”, “Season 2 Episode 3” or “Gooey”, the band still delivers enough hummable choruses that all but the most jaded hipsters are unlikely to complain if tracks from this album make their way onto your party playlist.
On the whole,
Dreamland is a fair sight less disastrous than it easily could have been, and a guy as handy with a hook as Bayley takes to this new, more mainstream format about as well as one could expect. Glass Animals have never shied away from poppy mass appeal, and if by some miracle this is the album that turns them into chart-topping superstars, well, I’ll gladly take this new version of Glass Animals over whatever slop Adam Levine or Dan Reynolds is churning out of their respective meat-grinders. But that’s the thing: Until now, Glass Animals were a good band with the potential to be a great band. If
Dreamland is any indicator of their direction from here on out, I’ll have to content myself with Glass Animals being a slightly-better version of something mediocre.
