March 6th, just prior to the quarantine and band tours abruptly stopping, Glass Animals stopped into the Current studio and while they were vague when it came to talking about their forthcoming album, they were open about the band's hiatus and the accident that caused it. In 2018, drummer Joe Seaward was cycling in Dublin and he, "got hit by a truck when [he] was trying to cross a road". Seaward explained to host Jill Riley, "It was bad. I can remember everything until it happened. I can remember the moment it happened, but I can't remember anything after that for about a week."
The idea about how memories work, what you can hold, and what gets lost seems to have been on Glass Animals' mind quite a bit while creating their new album, Dreamland. The third album from the band is a personal slideshow of memories from childhood to recent days (complete with interludes of singer Dave Baley's mom from home videos). The band has long shied away from sharing their own stories, as Baley told NME, thinking it would be too selfish. Previous albums contemplated big questions about the world at large or a series of songs that featured stories the band gathered on the road from fans, cab drivers, and random run-ins.
This round of songs still shimmer and poppily slide along for summertime listening - but the lyrics hit home. Dreamland is an apt title for the album - a hazy forest of sounds that sharpen and fade thru stories of former friends, regrets, and snippets of memories that are gone before you can fully grasp them. A glossy new album that finds Glass Animals well into their groove and giving their fans what they want - an escape into a world that even at it's most horrific and tense will fade in the misty synths leaving just the memory.
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