On the Run

We chat with alternative Brit band Glass Animals ahead of their Raleigh tour stop at Walnut Creek.

Glass Animals had been making waves in the indie-pop music scene for over a decade before taking a four-year hiatus—but, in music to your ears, the English psychedelic quartet is back with a world tour on the heels of their fourth studio album, I Love You So F***ing Much, including a stop at Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek in Raleigh Aug. 16. 

Having first gained attention with their 2014 album ZABA and single “Gooey,” which eventually went platinum in the U.S., the band later received global attention for the hit “Heat Waves” in 2022. The catchy single peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after spending a record-breaking 59 weeks (!) on the charts—and we’ll bet it’s still living rent-free in your mind today. 

Following that slow-burn success, Glass Animals’ fourth studio album debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard 200—their second-highest charting album in the U.S.—and now they’re taking the world by storm. Here, we caught up with half of the foursome, drummer Joe Seaward and guitarist/vocalist Drew MacFarlane, ahead of their City of Oaks show for insight on the new album and fresh sound. 

Your newest album feels less experimental. How has your sound matured over your four-year hiatus? 

JS: I think [our music] definitely matured. We have grown and changed as people, and with that comes a slightly different way of looking at the world and thinking about music. … Maybe it’s slightly less psychedelic, but it feels very normal to be inside it, so when you try and put yourself on the outside where you guys are looking in, it’s an interesting thought experiment. This album is really focused on space, which does lend itself to psychedelic stuff. 

DM: There is definitely a retro element to it, with the instruments we used and the environment we were in. This time we shut ourselves away—just the four of us in the studio for the whole process. That was the first time we ever made an album start to finish by ourselves. 

How did you land on space for the theme?

DM: I think the album started coming out of an existential crisis, and space is the biggest thing you can imagine—that itself gives you an existential crisis just thinking about it. The album ended up being a collection of love songs with a backdrop of the universe and its vastness. So I think it was that complement and contrast that rounded it off. 

Who were your biggest musical influences for this album? 

JS: One of the things that is great about Glass Animals is we all have different tastes—we have a Venn diagram of things we are interested in, with a lot of stuff around the edges. Dave [Bayley] has been listening quite a lot to music that was made in the ’60s and ’70s that was trying to sound like [the future]. … We experimented with the sounds and tried to match them with the tools at our disposable, more modern influences. 

Tell me about the album art. 

JS: The eyes on the cover are intimate. It’s that thing with human connection. Eyes are the most simple way of seeing somebody, but it’s set in the darkness of space. 

Will your setlist mainly stick to your newest album? 

DM: A lot of the new album, but we will definitely bring out the nuances from older albums… in the context of the new set. 

Fave song to perform live? 

DM: I love performing ‘Show Pony’ and ‘How I Learned to Love the Bomb.’

JS: To make things interesting, I love performing some of the old songs… but I’ve enjoyed this new set. It starts hard and fast, takes an emotional moment in the middle and comes back again. It’s going to be really fun. 

Any songs you don’t like playing live? 

DM: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And they have been consigned to the bin. There are some songs, but my relationship with them live doesn’t represent my feelings about them as music. There are some that are just really hard to play live. Some don’t work, and it’s not the ones you would think. 

*Answers lightly edited for length and clarity.