I Hate You So Fucking Much
“Hate” might be a strong word, but for Glass Animals’ newest album, ‘I Love You So Fucking Much,’ it’s the appropriate way to describe a complete setback from a previously innovative band.
Glass Animals had imagination. In 2014, the independent electro-pop band debuted with ZABA, a psychedelic, percussion-heavy record inspired by tropical jungles, children’s fairy tales, primitivist art, and animal sounds. Two years and one world tour later, Glass Animals released How to Be a Human Being, eleven songs telling the stories of eleven fictional characters that reflect all the people the band met on the road. The sophomore album brazenly rejected the “earnest reflection on fame” trope, or the tired idea of dedicating a whole album to the idea of becoming famous, and it instead pushed the band’s lyrical, musical, and thematic imagination. Then followed Dreamland in 2020, Glass Animals’ biggest hit so far. While known best for “Heat Waves,” the chart-topping single that held the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 100 for 59 weeks, the third record yet again dazzled listeners with another fresh, intelligent concept. Sure, it was singer/songwriter/front man Dave Bayley’s most personal record yet—he divided the album into three thematic parts, each reflecting on his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, further executing his vision by including samples from real home videos—but he still “drenched” his memories in early 2000s pop culture nostalgia to obscure the line between fantasy and reality. Simply put, each album is a self-contained universe, brimming with novelty and innovation in storytelling.
Notice how I said “had.” In I Love You So Fucking Much, Glass Animals’ fourth record, that imagination is completely lost, fretting instead over the attention the band received after one song got popular seemingly overnight. (“Heat Waves” wasn’t even the first single released during the album roll-out period, and it didn’t chart in the US until six months after the album’s release, I might add.) Here, the band decides not to follow a concept that laces throughout their records. Whereas previous ones often revolved around a central idea, I Love You So Fucking Much is simply about…love, I guess. Or maybe it’s about their career post-“Heat Waves,” as many songs lyrically, musically, and thematically copy its shallowness, only with the extra-added twinge of panic because of a sudden shift in identity. Regardless, nothing about this album sparks curiosity in the listener. Bayley, known for his eclectic and cool lyricism, fresh taste in electronic/hip-hop music, and penchant for subversive takes on the concept album, just lost his spark.
The album initially showed promise as a potential new direction for the band. The first track “Show Pony” immediately addresses the elephant in the room: the entire world now has its eyes on Glass Animals after “Heat Waves,” and Dave Bayley has to respond to this sudden change in both the independent and pop industrial circles that have taken hold of his band. On the surface, the lyrics describe the memory of a fast-paced relationship that burned out just as quickly as it ignited. It plays with the idea of a passionate love affair, aligning itself with the title of the record, but the flashes of different scenes don’t really build to anything. It’s more useful to think of this constructed relationship as a mask, a shallow metaphor that conceals the greater anxiety about fame, building off one’s legacy, and the scary possibility of pandering to mass appeal. “Show Pony” begins with an interpolation of “Heat Waves”—it uses the same (although slightly more reverbed) electric guitar riff and layers acoustic guitars and orchestral strings to replace the hit single’s original hip-hop/trap-influenced electronic beats—to establish the new album as a reaction to the newfound fame. Bayley even borrows the same rhythm and melody from the chorus of “Heat Waves” for the chorus of the new song, making the spiritual link between the two more obvious. The band forgoes its traditional electropop roots and instead continues with an energetic, anthem rock sound based in live instruments, offering a rawer, seemingly more unfiltered perspective into the artist’s internal world. Lines like, “So roll those credits, ‘cause the sequel’s gonna hurt” and “Smile as the knife is turned / Show pony making a return,” generate a list of questions artists like Bayley had to ask at these turning points in their career. Should he pick apart and repurpose different musical samples to write more songs like “Heat Waves”? Will people be disappointed that the “sequel” to his massive hit will not match its energy or potential for virality? Will the loyal fanbase from the days of ZABA and How to Be a Human Being still love him even after the mainstream breakthrough and switch to a major record label?* For a band not many people know about—aside from the one song that’s a simple lamentation about the memory of a past relationship—this re-introduction seems exciting, and it's exactly what people are interested in learning about. What’s going to happen to this quirky indie band now?
The answer to that question never comes. Aside from “Show Pony,” we don’t get any insight on the band’s growth after a freak stroke of luck. Instead, we get a lot of songs that rehash the conceit of “Heat Waves,” exploring an apparently disastrous breakup none of knew or cared about in the first place. “Creatures in Heaven”—a track about a love that could have been immaculate set to sweeping, romantic cellos, violins, guitars, and an electronic beat—is filled with corny lines like, “It tears through my head, does it haunt you too? / Diamonds in the dark in your old bedroom / You held me like my mother made me just for you / You held me so close that I broke in two,” and “I'm only really me when I'm here with you / And it gets into your head like a cosmic zoom / Coat on the door like an old space suit / So long, cowboy, you're so cool / Cash in hand with a memory of you.” The sixth track “I Can’t Make You Fall In Love Again,” begins from a mellow strumming of the acoustic guitar coupled with a kickdrum that sounds like a heartbeat gradually speeding up, and Bayley’s sharp raspy vocals cut through the coolness like a knife. However, once the strings and drum kick in, the song transforms into yet another overly-grandiose, late-stage Britpop (think of the saccharine pompousness of The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony”) angst about, as the reader could guess by this point, a relationship that didn’t work out. “White Roses” recycles the hip-hop beat from “Heat Waves” and adopts the same structure of fixating on one tangible object (white roses v. the hot weather), giving the listener the same song with less creativity.
The most compelling tracks dropped the traditional rock band sound entirely, leaning more into an edgier, more techno, hip-hop groove. “Wonderful Nothing” begins with Bayley’s crispy falsetto rising above the quiet plucks and glides of violins, fades into a slowly crescendoing electronic hum, and then bursts into a punchy, techno beat. “A Tear in Space (Airlock),” the second single off the record, has a fun, tropical flare, and the pronounced kickbeat with the staccato of the strings and piano carry much needed momentum from an otherwise slow album. However, while these tracks did revitalize the band’s energy after a jaded beginning, and they offer the greatest departure from anything on Dreamland, they struggle to find cohesion with the record. Glass Animals shuts and locks the hip-hop door behind them after “A Tear in Space,” returning to the safety net of anthem rock for the rest of the album. The lyrics of “Wonderful Nothing” try to show Bayley’s teeth as he attempts to appear intimidating, but they’re just a collection of disparate, “badass” images that do not paint a story.
The original appeal of Glass Animals was the electropop/hip-hop swagger injected into every track. The imaginative storytelling either in the anti-introspective reflection on the tour life (How to Be a Human Being), or the exploration of childhood memories through video games and technology (Dreamland). It was the lewd, almost palpable lyricism that made songs like “Gooey” or “Take A Slice” iconic, or it was the occasional self-reflective moments like “Agnes” and “Helium” that provided shocking moments of total sincerity. It was Dave Bayley’s unique vocals working with the music to create the sound, never overpowering it. I Love You So Fucking Much is a hollow, disheartened record that both hates and yearns to recreate its predecessor of “Heat Waves.” If this innate nihilistic attitude toward musical development is the fate of a band that was once seemingly three steps ahead of pop music, then there’s no hope for the survival of the legacy of any indie band that accidentally makes it big one day.
*Prior to I Love You So Fucking Much, Glass Animals’ records were supported by independent label Wolf Tone. Wolf Tone was acquired by Universal Music Group (UMG) before the 2020 release of Dreamland, making it their first album technically supported by a major label. I Love You So Fucking Much belongs to Polydor Records, a subsidiary of UMG. However, the status of “independent” is still tricky to debate because Glass Animals/Dave Bayley still writes, composes, engineers, mixes, and produces the music in-house, according to the record’s details.
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