New music! Yay! And from a band I was highly anticipating new music from! A few years back, Glass Animals experienced some real trauma when their drummer was struck by a truck while he was on a bike. The recovery process sounded like a slow one, but luckily he’s back in full health and helping the band make music again! Really, it hasn’t been all that long since their sophomore effort came out, but that doesn’t make me any less excited about the release of Dreamland.
Especially since a lot of the singles released for it were pretty stellar. While from a high level, Dreamland kept the same unique Glass Animals’ vibe, but it also deviated from the norm by including a lot more manually produced beats. Not that I’m complaining. If they wanted to go for a more dance friendly aesthetic then they totally nailed it. The album itself seemed to be broken into small chunks that covered various topics such as childhood, heartbreak, and love. And each section was divided by small instrumental snippets that were interspersed with dialogue.
My favorite track hands down has to be “Heat Waves.” It takes lead singer Dave Bayley’s falsetto and makes it melodic in between bombastic beats. It’s truly beautiful, and after listening to it well over a hundred times, I’m still not sick of it. On the complete opposite end of the Glass Animals spectrum is the lead single, “Tokyo Drifting,” which features rapper Denzel Curry, but it is no less catchy than the rest of the haul. Title track, “Dreamland” is quite creative lyrically, and makes an appearance in a few other songs throughout the record.
The whole album launches the band in a fun new direction and once the coronavirus decides to leave us all alone, I imagine they will be making man fun festival stops (hopefully I can attend one!). If you’ve never checked this band out in the past, I encourage you to listen to their entire catalog because everything they do is gold and you should reward your ears with their music!