Glass Animals - "I Love You So F***ing Much" (2024)

Glass Animal's last record, 2020's Dreamland, was a massive disappointment for me, as the group stripped out all of the interesting art pop and indietronica elements that made their first two records such captivating releases and replaced them with a boring, washed out and often overproduced dreamy synth pop sound with little engaging songwriting and a handful of real dud tracks that made listening through quite a chore to be honest. While I would've liked the band to have course corrected for their fourth album, I wasn't that hopeful due to the track Heat Waves becoming the groups first pop crossover hit and a global smash at that - I was expecting the band to double down on that sound. While Heat Waves was far from the worst track on Dreamland, it was so meh and middle of the road I didn't even mention it in my review back in 2020. I also feel that Heat Waves' success is more a product of circumstance rather than it being a particularly good song, as the lyrical content about melancholic nostalgia and warm, summery vibe kind of unintentionally captured the zeitgeist of 2020 (everyone being locked up in their houses all summer) and was just alternative enough to appeal to indie kids whilst also being radio-friendly enough to get airtime on pop radio.

While the stinker tracks really drag down the experience of Dreamland, it does have a core concept and narrative being frontman Dave Bailey's coming of age story. I don't think it's executed particularly well, but it's there. Whereas on ILYSFM, it's virtually non-existent. As the title suggests, it's broadly about 'love' and 'human connection', but none of these songs really have anything interesting or profound to say about it. (The weirdly self-censored title is also pretty pointless, but that's an aside). Similarly, on a musical level, the dream pop aesthetics of dreamland were boring at best and clunky at worst; but they're certainly more interesting than what we have here - which is incredibly bland, predictable synth pop that's way too overproduced with way too many layers and a complete lack of fidelity to anything in the mix. Everything here sounds like blown out mush. ILYSFM is essentially 40 minutes of songs that sound like Heat Waves without the earwormy hook and 'vibey' production.

While Dreamland had lower lows, it certainly had higher highs - with a fairly mid track like Heat Waves being better than this entire album. The melodies are simple and repetitive, the lyrics are unremarkable, the production is crap. The best the album gets is Wonderful Nothing, which is built around a massive sounding buzzing synth bass and a darker vocal performance from Bailey which is reminiscent of moments on the band's second album. And it's not like the song is even that memorable, but stands out as having a core idea that isn't just the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus pop song format with layers of mushed up synths on top. whatthehellishappening? sounds like Currents era Tame Impala with way too much reverb and fader and an awfully repetitive melody. The singles Creatures in Heaven and A Tear in Space (Airlock) try their best to be the Heat Waves of this album (Creatures in Heaven's chorus is basically just a rework of Heat Waves), but they're just so overblown and melodramatic. The back half of the record isn't quite as egregious, but again none of these song's come together into anything memorable or unique.

I think the dud tracks on Dreamland really dragged it down in my opinion, because in reflection I'd definitely prefer to listen to that over this. At least it tries something, and there are a couple of tracks I like on that album. I Love You So F***ing Much, on the other hand, is just plain boring. I genuinely think I won't remember any moment from a single one of these songs after a couple of weeks. The fact that this is the same band that made such invigorating and exciting songs like Gooey, Life Itself, Take A Slice is baffling. It has been such a fast and steep fall from grace.

3/10