Glass Animals - "Dreamland" (2020)

Glass Animals first two albums were pretty different, but equally great records that mixed up a lot of different sounds and styles including art pop, psychedelia, R&B and indietronica. However since the release of How To Be A Human Being in 2016, the band's drummer Joe Seaward was involved in a serious cycling accident and suffered brain damage, causing the band to go on hiatus while he recovered. Thankfully he has made a full recovery, and the whole experience left frontman Dave Bayley wanting to create a more personal album for their next release, as opposed to the eccentric character studies of HTBAHB.

This shift in lyrical content has also been accompanied by a shift in sound as well. The R&B elements of their sound take the centre stage here, with the psychedelic and art pop tendencies nowhere to be found. These R&B influences have been augmented with more than a handful of trap beats and a general washed-out, hazy dream pop atmosphere. I understand that this an attempt to match the dreamy nostalgia of the lyrical content, and that the more eccentric elements of the band's sound in the past would not have fit. However the album doesn't really sound dreamy, it sounds flat and sedated. This is part due to how slickly produced it is, but mostly due to the generic and predictable songwriting on both fronts - lyrically and musically.

Nearly every beat and groove on this record feels like I've heard it before in some generic pop tune on the radio in the past two or three years. It's the same thing with the hooks, melodies and chord progressions. It's almost as if the band was aiming for that market of boring, meaningless, 'vibey' pop songs that leave no impact and say nothing. The title track opens up the record with the most generic of Ibiza styled piano riff's before Bayley comes in with the most repetitive of vocal melodies, all filtered through so much reverb and echo it just sounds like slush. That's literally all the song does for three and a half minutes. The following track, Tangerine, sounds like Bayley heard Childish Gambino's Feels Like Summer, tried to make it, and ended up making something that sounds enough like it for it to be noticeable, but with a melody and groove so repetitive it fails miserably at recreating that euphoric summery vibe. It's All So Incredibly Loud is a linear track that is supposed to build and build throughout until the climax at the end of the song. However, the chord progression and synth crescendo at the of the song sound like any summer club track you'd here over the past 4 or 5 years; even if the percussion rhythm at the base of the track is decent.

Lyrically the album just doesn't work either. It's supposed to be about Bayley's experiences growing up - so it's a coming of age story. But it isn't; it's just a bunch of references to things from the late 90s / early 2000s (Space Ghost Coast To Coast is basically just a list of early 00s video games), and generic 'vibey' party songs about partying and sex and booze. There's no story here, no arc. Bayley is telling us nothing about himself, and filling in the gaps with his usual references to fruit and other random things. This fractured, whacky lyrical style worked on HTBAHB when he was turning it up to 11 and creating these incredibly eccentric character studies. On Dreamland, it seems like he doesn't want to turn himself into a caricature like this, but toning down the eccentricity just makes obvious Bayley's lyrical shortcomings.

While the majority of the record, while incredibly dull and boring, is inoffensively bland; there are a handful of real stinkers in here. Tokyo Drifting features Bayley's absolutely terrible attempt at trap rapping, and his vocals are filtered with so many effects that it genuinely sounds horrible. Luckily he hands the reigns over to Denzel Curry half way through, and Denzel being an incredibly talented rapper almost saves the track (but not quite). Melon And The Coconut personifies a fracturing relationship as these two fruit talking to each other, and it as stupid as it sounds. Bayley's vocals are filtered through the worst auto-tune imaginable, and there's a bluesy guitar part in the track that feels like its been put through the same awful effects. Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth obsession with sex really rubs the wrong way, I think due to it trying so hard to come across dirty and edgy while still attempting to be random and quirky. There's a lyric about gummy bears in this track, and gummy bears are not sexy, and trying to make them sound it comes across really weird and creepy. The track is also awfully mixed. Every part of the song is either too loud or too quiet at various points, but the dynamic is constantly shifting and it sounds terrible.

There are a couple of tracks that do feel fairly decent, although they would easily be some of the weakest tracks if they appeared on the group's first two records. Hot Sugar is built on the same jazzy sample as Loyle Carner's You Don't Know from last year, and it gives the song more of a sense of genuine coolness and actual life to it, and the vocal melody isn't too bad either. However if I think about the track too much, all I can think of is that if I like the song because of the sample and You Don't Know uses the sample better, why aren't I listing to that instead? Your Love (Deja Vu) is easily the best track here. The beat and bass groove on the track give it the greatest sense of urgency and momentum of any of the songs, and Bayley's vocals sound sensual and impactful. And the melody is actually catchy and not repetitive.

This record is one of those ones that feels so much longer than it is, by virtue of it being so repetitive and boring. I could not tell any of tracks from the last leg of the record apart from each other, because they all sound the same, and all sound so weak and unmemorable. Furthermore, there are enough stinkers on here for me to not ever want to come back to it. I find it so perplexing that the band threw out everything that made their first two records really interesting and fun, and replaced it with a sound that is already done to death, that they aren't even doing to a degree of any quality. This is not a good album and I'm really disappointed by it.

Top Track: Your Love (Deja Vu)

3/10