Don’t let the patchouli-scented Jam band name fool you — Glass Animals have very little in common with that blissed-out branch of musical endeavor. Rather than unstructured guitar noodling punctuated by intermittent cosmic word-soup poetry, the Oxford (U.K., not Ohio) quartet carefully executes a sonic blueprint that mashes up elements of Trip Hop, Psychedelia, Electronica and Soul with an avant-garde sense of studio experimentalism and a chart-topping producer’s perfectionist streak.
Originally a one-man bedroom project of Dave Bayley’s, Glass Animals became a full-fledged band with the addition of three of Bayley’s oldest friends; Drew MacFarlane, Joe Seaward and Edmund Irwin-Singer. After playing its first gig, the quartet constructed its debut EP, 2012’s Leaflings, with an ear toward chill grooves and deft sonic dickery that was both engaging and intriguing, like Brian Eno encouraging Morcheeba’s Art Pop heart.
Leaflings captivated a broad swatch of critical tastemakers, garnering Glass Animals an impressive level of acclaim and tweaking the radar of producer Paul Epworth (whose estimable credits include Adele and Florence + the Machine). Epworth immediately made Glass Animals the first band on the roster of his freshly formed Wolf Tone label. After hitting the road with the similarly quirkcentric St. Vincent, Glass Animals began work on their debut full-length, last year’s highly regarded ZABA, its title lifted from William Steig’s 1987 children’s book, The Zabajaba Jungle. Influenced by Flying Lotus, the aforementioned Radiohead and a veritable universe of other reference points (witness their Gospel Synth Pop version of Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown”), Glass Animals take a passionate approach to music that is intricate and layered yet simple and groovy — as maddeningly infectious as a poison-ivy breakout on your frontal lobe.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2015.