Glass Animals

Drummer Joe Seaward was struck by a truck as he wrote his bicycle, requiring a lengthy period of rehabilitation. As Seaward recovered, my Guest underwent a creative reset. He began writing and producing for other artists, and he began to look inward. The result is Dreamland, his most personal and vulnerable work to date, crammed with references to his nineties childhood and though sometimes painful lessons of adolescence. Released last August,

the album features the global smash heat Waves. It's a deceptively mournful earworm steeped in isolation, Lone This and the Longing for a lost loved one. The song has been remixed a number of times by the likes of Diplow, Oliver Helden's Sonny Forda Written, and most recently, and Your I'm so happy to welcome the lead singer and composer of Glass Animals, Dave Bailey. Absolute pleasure, Thank you for thank you for having me. Oh my goodness, so much

to ask you about. First off, keet waves is blowing up around the world. Did you have any indication when you were writing it that it would resonate in such a big way? You can never already aim for. I feel like when you sit down to write dong, you really have no idea what it's gonna come out. It's like I always is the fishing analogy. You might have

heard it before, but it's a bit like fishing. You just kind of throw your rod in and normally you catch weeds all to eat or something, but heat Waits's just it kind of just jumped in the boat. And I was like, oh, that's actually quite a nice fish. And I actually tried to give it to someone else. I was right. I was writing for someone else's record for a little bit around that time, and I tried to give it to them, and they didn't want it.

Time to write the Glass Animals album, I kind of went through a bunch of old tracks and I found I found this, and I was like, oh, I actually quite like that. It's good. The song is a kind of a unique part of its genesis, one that I can't really think of for any other tough forty song wearing I think Johnny Depp was the first person on the planet besides you to hear it. Do I have that right? Yeah? I mean it's true, It's true through

absolutely completely unintentional in every way. I was just in the studio Very Very is a big studio complex in North London. They're like five rooms in this in this complex, and I was there really late at night, and I thought I was alone and I was just list I think i'd finished the song at that point. Basically, it came together really quickly, in about an hour, and I was listening to kind of last final playback and blasting

it and the song finished. I had someone tinkering on a piano behind me, and I've really scared me because if I was alone and turned around and it was just some long hair kind of drooping over the piano and I was like, who who are you? And they turned around and it was it was Johnny Depp. So crazy. Yeah, he was with another artist and another studio, I think, assuming me making some music and he got lost on the way to the toilet. It was gonna give you

like PTSD. Here's something. Every time you think you're alone, you check over your shoulder and make sure. Johnny Depp's like, not just there. I do that, know. I actually so tempted to just like get a mirror, would be so now I couldn't look at myself when I'm making music. That freaked me out. He said. The song came together in like an hour. Is that? I mean? Usually we hear about songs that have been lavished over for months and months. Did you find that the best songs come

come quickly? I do. I feel like at least all of the ideas come quickly, and then sometimes you have to sieve through if you start with has potential. Like some chords that really have tent I think you know they have potential and you know that they're good because loads of other ideas just start coming of the vocal lines. They just end up kind of coming coming out they right themselves, and then the drums happen and the base

happen and it all just flows out. Sometimes you end up with way too much stuff, and I feel like that's when it can take a long time to write a song, where either when you're like missing one thing that you just can't work out, or you have so much stuff that you have to sieve through it for like find out which elements and which about kind of subtractive in a weird way. But this one just kind of happened, and if everything just fit it was it

was very lucky. What was that all? Quote is somebody was talking to a sculptor and very fair might have been wrote down or something, and said, how do you how do you do that? How do you take you know, how do you get the beautiful human form from this big block of marble? And I think you said, I think it was him, might have been somebody else said I just take away everything that doesn't look like a person. And of course to him that made total sense, but

to the rest of us, it's, uh, it's magic. Yeah. Basically, I feel like writing songs work both ways. Either you kind of throw everything at it and you end up with a block of marble, then you don't have to chip away at and to resemble a song, or you're just kind of delicately balancing things. And I feel like with heat Ways, I was delicately balancing and then it just like an hour later, I sat back and I

was like, oh wow, everything's balance. It's so crazy. So much of the song deals with isolation and disconnection and and loneliness in a lot of ways. How much of the track was influenced by by the pandemic lockdown at a time when you know we're all sort of feeling this way. It was pre pand I read it pre pandemic. It just happened to come at a time when I've, like our drumma basically had this terrible, terrible accident, and I think this. I kind of ended up finishing this

song in the in the wake of that. And there's also I lost someone very close to me in their birthdays in June, so every time that their birthday starts arriving, I start to feel this really like I don't know, and I love myself. I basically kind of hide away for a bit. Basically, what I'm trying to say is I was because my drummer had this this accident, we kind of stopped touring, and um, I was feeling this kind of strange sentimental way because of the memory of

my friend. I think I ended up in a weirdly similar state to how a lot of people were feeling during the pandemic. I noticed everybody was just digging up memories, digging up the past, and being really nostalgic. And my brain was just in that place when when writing this song. But I guess a year before that, maybe a year and a bit before pandemic actually happened. He mentioned your drummer Josie was act and how how's he doing now? Is he? He sounds like he's very much on the

men's Yes. Sorry, I should always always forget to say that, but he's doing incredibly incredible back in the drums again. We played a lot of shows and he's better drummer than ever before. I think he was so determined to get back on the drum kit. I remember he sent me a video of him getting back on the drum kit for the first time after not being able to walk and talk take him a long time. He sent

that video over and I just like cried. It was magical, so that is wonderful because I mean, you were a background in neuroscience, so you were uniquely you know, per to to know what kind of long road he was facing. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, it was pretty It was horrifying when he was in the in the studio, in the hospital. Sorry, I went to I went to visit Amy had the accident in Ireland, and I just got on the first flight that I could as soon as I heard about

it and went over there. And seeing him and seeing as a neuroscientist having done some neuroscience and then knowing how bad it could have been and where he is now, it's just it's actually a miracle. That is that is wonderful. That's that's so good to hear, and I mean it's it's it has to be gratifying in some ways for you with a song that came from such a personal place for you is being received tens hundreds of millions

of people listening to the song right now. They came from such a I guess I'll say a dark moment for you that has to to feel good. I mean, kind of a making lemonade out of Lemons situation, I suppose, Yeah, is it did come from a dark moment, but I guess I was trying to I was trying to see a kind of an optimism. I always try optimism in there if it's if it's a dark song, and i'd find But when the pandemic came, I found myself in a really similar headspace to that. It was. It was

it was tough over here. I'm sure it was the same in America. Over here, lockdown was tough, and it was tightened. A lot of people struggled, and then we needed that the kind of I don't know. I found myself listening to a lot of songs that had that. They were kind of sad songs, but had an optimism in their hope. It's funny. During the last eighteen months of the whole lockdown, I found myself listening to things that I haven't listened to since I was in high

school in the early two thousand's. I mean, just musical comfort food, you know what I mean? Have you been that way? Absolutely with everything with my actual food as well my mom music. I was eating like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again. I was watching The Karate Kid again. I was watching all these movies and shows that I grew up with, eating the food that I grew up with. And yeah, I think it's when you can't go out and create new memories, you start like reliving the old ones.

That's the only thing I only explanation I had for it. But I noticed it everybody I knew, all my friends sending me old records that they used to listen to and old like old films to watch and things. It's great and I got a lot of those references. I think I even picked up a dunk a Ruse reference in in the new album Dreamland, which came out last year. A lot of outlets have referred to the album as your memoir. I think the even Evening Standard, London Evening

Standard had that in the headline. What do you think of that categorization? That's I never really I guess I didn't really think about it like that when I was writing it. But also my memoir was a bit thin. I don't think write a memoir when you're like eighty and you've like lived and have some actual perspective. But this, I think this album is less like I don't really know if it comes to any conclusions. I guess it's

just rather than a memoir. It's more just like diving head first into the past and not just appreciate that it's okay to not no diving into it. I feel like in a memoir you'd have some kind of conclusion about your life. There there's no conclusions in this record. It's just embracing the fact that it's okay to be confused and not no answers. I was gonna say, I've got a lot of messages of acceptance in in the songs.

I feel like, yeah, it's acceptance and just again writing that, like not not knowing the answer and just kind of being okay with that. I think I think growing up, I grew up in Texas, and there's there's a lot of as a boy growing up in Texas, there are a lot of things that you're kind of expected to do, and I never fit into any of those categories. I

was never you know, I never played sports. I was quite small, and I never really did the things that they thought I should do at school and never fit in for that reason. And this this, I guess there's a sense of me just being like, that's actually what makes us all our own people. It's not not necessarily thing in doing your own doing your own thing, and that's that's actually good. Oh absolutely, I think that's that's

such an important message to get out there. And I think that we need to get to two people earlier in their lives too, Is it really? Because I feel like there's a point in so many kids lives when they're told, okay, you know, put the guitar down, put put the you know, paintbrush down or whatever, gets serious as opposed to just letting them sort of sort of be.

And I know that the name of the album Dreamland was taken for something a teacher actually said to you, right, yeah, yeah, it kind of kind of directly references that it was my teacher. I think she was my social studies teacher. She was amazing. I actually really loved her as a teacher. She was amazing. And she used to just snap her fingers to say they pay attention, like you're in dreamland again. I need you to focus. And that's it stuck with

me my whole life. I was always drifting off, I know, which always catch myself going into into dreamland until this very day. It's healthy. I was gonna say, you say that like it's a bad thing. Oh, I know. I think it's a great thing to do. It's been particularly helpful like making music. That's just a little bit earlier with with the Genesis of heat Waves. But your prior album, How to Be a Human Being that was was almost like a series of short stories, like from a fiction writer,

a lot of character studies in the songs. What was the catalyst for sort of this this more autobiographical, you know, memoir shift. Was it just just sort of the the you know, looking inward like you mentioned earlier, or was there was that an avenue that you wanted to go towards in your music and you wanted to sort of build up confidence by writing about other people first and then tackling what was inside. I'm never really wanted to write about myself, but just I kind of started doing

it because I was writing songs for other people. That's really easy to write about yourself or like a person story because you're not singing it, no one actually applies it to you, and you can can tell all your great secrets. That That's kind of what started. And then there was a song I think the first time I did it in a Glass Animals song was there's a song called Agnes on the end of album, to the end of that process that writing that album and I

actually didn't want it was too personal for me. I didn't want to put it on the album. But the the Joe actually I'm Druna convinced convinced me too, and we did it. In The response from fans to that song was like absolutely life changing. It was a really it was a really hard thing to write about it.

But then the like people I don't know, we got like letters from fans saying that song really spoke to them more so than any other song we'd ever released, and that really meant a lot to me that if you can write something so personal and be so honest in the song and it affects people like that, maybe it's it's okay to try it again. And I guess. I guess. I also realized that a lot of my favorite songs and favorite song writes in the past, that

is that's what they did. They wrote really personal things and people it made them feel like. Those songs made me feel less alone. When I was feeling strange, I would listen to The Beach Boys, listened to I don't Know, I just read, I listened to my favorite songs and feel comfortable, like some like these are my heroes and they've they're feeling a bit out of sorts, they're feeling strange, so it's okay. It kind of justifies the way that you're feeling. And I just thought, maybe maybe I could

do that for one person. Maybe it sounds like a lot more than one person. You you set me up perfectly to talk about I'm almost embarrassed to bring this album up because I feel, like I mentioned in every single episode, it is one of my my favorite pieces of music of all time. Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys head beach Boy Brian Wilson's meditation on his past and growing up in all those life moments, I get the feeling that Dreamland is sort of your Pet Sounds

in a way. Yeah, that album was hugely influential, and on this one, as if you can hear it in the you know a lot of the sounds, and I actually went out and got a lot of the instruments and preambsence like I've got racks of gear here that I went out and found the stuff the Beach Boys used and the Beatles and also my favorite like more modern record producers a lot of amazing hip hop producers. They went out and source their samplers and and stuff

like that. But yeah, a lot of the guitars. And there's a mellotron here, which is a kind of keyboard that Beach Boys and the Beatles used a lot. Yeah, one of my favorite records top certainly, probably my favorite record of all time, top three for sure. I was just invited on a podcast called My Favorite Album, and that was the one I spoke up for about an hour all about why PET sounds so much, So it's very fresh on my mind. Wow, what other I mean?

This is total gear nerd stuff. You have a melotron that's amazing. What other kind of stuff do you have? What have I got? I mean, I've got You'll have to come over for a tour one day. But I've got a lot of older guitars. I've got a half No. Five hundred, which is like a very classic Paul McCartney bass. It's beautiful. Oh. I used one of those until I made the switch to a Rickenbacker bass like he did

on Revolver, because I wanted a little heavier. I wish I could tell you more because I've just I've just done it. I've been using a Rickenbacker lately. That's all I'll say. Any any anymore on that or all I can say. That's all I can say. I've been using one quite a lot, and it sounds it sounds cool. Maybe it's something people were here at some point. I was gonna say, I can't wait to hear it. I'm sure I will very soon. It's it's I mean, that's

a great bass guitar. But yeah, I've got a lot of old instruments and a lot of old synthesizers here that really are just the classic. Yeah, there's classic sounds of that error. That's why I love so much about your music. And when you use these you know, melotrons and Nive compressors and vintage drum machines to make something that you know, all these these vintage pieces from fifty sixty years ago, that makes sounds that something like Timberland and dr dre with meg and it gets such a

really unique blend, really unique sound. I mean that that was exactly the idea is because I was trying to kind of take all of my favorite records from growing up and just use them. So, yeah, I was recording a lot of those Beetles and Beach Boys instruments through the samplers the Dr Dre and Timberland might have used, and chopping basically chopping them up. So I think that kind of lends. Yeah, it takes those older instruments and brings them, brings a little bit more of a modern

chopped sound to them. And then I was doing the opposite. I was rerecording those samplers and those drums that Timberland and Dr Drey might have used through all these old pre amps, yeah, that they used in the sixties. I read that you you write the majority of of your songs on on your first guitar, all classical guitar with nylon strings. That true. My dog is you can probably hit my dog going absolutely crazy. Hold on, what's up with I was biting? It's during his own tail. It's

not me growling. It's a it's a small, tiny little dog. But yeah, I have it here. Oh man, it never leaves my aside. Really, I write everything on it. And if if the song works on that and voice together,

yeah you're golden. You want that skeleton, the backbone of the song to be as strong as possible, and then you can start adding all the big drums and little drums and the bass and the production details, but really you need that, You need the melody and the chords to just be solid as a rock before you start doing that. I think that's such a great technique. I

think I read that. I think it was David Bowie would write some a lot of his early stuff, pre hunky Dory stuff on this old beat up acoustic TV string and people would say, you know, you can get you a better guitar. I said, no, if I can make it sound good on this, it'll sound good on on anything. Absolutely. Yeah. That was like. That was also what Tom Morello Rage Against the Machine used to. He used to write all of those huge riffs on a guitar like this one that's like, really what a rubbish

classical guitar. And he was like, look if it sounds heavy on this little dinky, sound like when I've got it going through my through my amps with my electric and he was totally right. Those those riffs are absolute monsters. Have you been been feeling productive musically during during the last eighteen months during during lockdown? I have, yeah, I guess. We released the album Wow nearly a year ago that has gone so quickly, weirdly quickly. It's time. The time

warp of the pandemic is really Yeah. Anyway, we released the album most a year ago, so there was a lot of album launch stuff happening for about six seven months after that, and I feel like the last couple of months I've gotten to get gotten to make some music again, not necessarily Glass Animals stuff, quite a lot for some other projects, working with some feel so lucky to get to work with some really incredible, incredible people,

and I've been doing doing a lot of that. Any names were able to share at this point or not quitely not, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I'm so excited for people to hear it. I feel very, very lucky. How often do you write? Is it is it a daily practice like some people run every day or do yoga every day, or is it just when you feel that you have something, something to say, something to put

out there. I wish I could do it every day that there are the commitments around just being in you know, there's touring, there's a lot of set up for that, there's doing the artwork for stuff. It's it's quite a lot doing a like Glass animals record because there's like artwork, there's promo, there's touring, there's there's a lot of stuff around it, and I enjoy it all. But there are some days where I'm like, oh God, I feel like it's feel like writing today, and I can't because I'm

in a tour bus. Don't get me wrong, I love I love touring. I have a lot of fun doing it, but I do I need to find more time to write, That's all I mean. It must have been difficult to release such a you know, a highly personal album in the midst of a pandemic. When you when promoting it's obviously a challenge. Was it like throwing your baby off

a cliff or something? I mean, you really must have had to get really creative with all the different ways to promote it while you know, not leaving your home and your fans not leaving theirs. That was tough. That was really, really, really hard. And an album is that. It's exactly the analogy I always used. An album is like your baby, and you want your baby. I don't actually have kids, I don't know. You want your kid to have the best shot, the best chance, and to

do well and to be happy. And make friends, and I guess we we wanted that for this album. We it was scary. We had conversations with our team managers that were like they were basically like, look, put the album out and then just start writing your next one. You might just have to write this one off. It was scary and it felt I was so reluctant. I was like, no way, this is my child and everything. So we just cranked up. We did everything we could.

All the creative thing is that we could possibly imagine to try and replace that void that is pouring and you know, running around the world doing promo and that stuff. You had a fan remix competitions that must have been really cool for you to hear what people would do with with your songs and hearing your own music fresh again.

It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I guess touring normally gives you this like back and you know, you're playing something to someone, they're singing it back, and you get this nice back and forth and you feed off each other's energy and then the show hopefully is you get like a bit of magic and everyone's on this like wavelength. That's really nice. And the remix competition was just something

it was like this. I thought it would be an interesting way to try and get a little bit of that back and forth that you can get a live show. So you give. We gave people the stems and all the parts we used to make songs, and people started putting them back together on their own way, and it was so I mean, some of the remixes are better

than the original as far as I'm concerned. It was so nice to see that, and I some of the new remixes you have now all of our Malcolm on Tokyo Drifting and Brie Runaway on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. There's a name from my childhood. My god, I saw that that song title. It's like, oh my god. Yes, it's a brilliant show. It's a brilliant show. It's a brilliant song. Thanks. Thanks, Yeah. The bre run Brie is like one of my favorite you but she's not a

new artist past. I've discovered it relatively recently and she's absolutely one of my favorites. She's incredible. She crushed it. Speaking of getting creative, I wanted to ask you about the the Space Ghost Coast to Coast video. For those who haven't seen it, it's kind of like a game of the Sims that's been hacked and all the characters are are are gay, running around, sometimes naked, sometimes not dancing. How how did this come about? It's I've never seen

a video like this in my life. Well, I used to not really like making music videos. They always kind of scared me and I never liked being in them. That always really freaked me out. But then yeah, the pandemic happened. I was like, look, we've got to get super This is how people are going to be digesting the music. They're gonna be watching the video. They can't come see us live. This is the way that this is the like the way that people might get some

context around the song. So we've got we just started thinking extra hard. But everyone was locked down in England. We were allowed out for I think like an hour a day for exercise at that point, and we had to make music videos like this, like so we had to get like super crazy creative. I made a music video in my kitchen and made a music video on

the street outside my house for heat waves. Was like went and put a little notice that is through everyone's mailboxes saying like look what I'm going to walk down the street at seven o'clock tonight, will you just film me out your window on your phone and then uploaded to the drop box and that that worked. And then this one the director as a friend of mine, Max is genius. I was like, look, you come to the park near my house that I can see through my window.

I'll use a camera that I have with a super super long lens and film you and then I'm going to multiply are you like you were in a computer game? And it works so well because the lyrics reference like Grand Theft Auto and James Double. I don't know if you ever played the N sixty four, But there's Golden Eye. I have one hooked up on my TV right now. Golden Eye and Mario Carter the only two games I have named genuinely the same, the best ones. Oh yeah,

but he just took that to another level. Many I'm gonna I'm going to make the freakiest thing that I can And he definitely did it. It was genius. Is it is really incredible? Definitely definitely something to see. You recently performed in front of real, live human beings at the the Billboard Music Awards. How is it being back out there. I mean, how is it like actually performing for people again? Scary? Really, I get a little bit nervous always before going on stage. I'm not a natural.

I'm quite shy naturally. I get a little bit nervous before shows in general, and that is shocking to hear. Look watching that performance, I distinctly thought, my god, it was like a swan coming in for landing. It was just effortless. I usually get nervous for like the first minute or something, and then it's then you're kind of in and it's okay. You're like, oh, okay, we're doing this. Uh, and you just ride. You just go and do it and finish it. And it was it was fun by

the end of it. I was really enjoying it. But the first minute, yeah, it was pretty I was pretty scared. And you've got the tour announced for I think in August. I mean, that's got to be great just to you know, to have the crowd singing your song back at you. You know, it's gonna be unique for you because it's not like you're going out there with a new song to play for the first time to the crowd. You go out there and it's already a hit, so everybody

already knows it from the Get Girl. That's gotta be cool. It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be cool, It's gonna be I think it's gonna be absolutely euphoric, just so many reasons, Like it's so strange to have had actually just not play these songs at all yet. And I think also because Joe coming back on the drums and playing like big shows for the first time since he's

had his accident. The combination of that and live music coming back for the first time and having not been able to play these songs yet in the album haven't been out for years, or just going to culminate in this. It's going to be amazing. I am so excited. I can't wait to see Glass Animals out there against soon. It's going to be wicked. Please come whenever, whenever you can, whenever we get I think when do we head out end of August, we head out to the States? Absolutely

how old he's a year and a bit. Yeah, he's still kind of Yeah, he's an adult. Really, he knows. He's rowling up the microphone right now. I don't know what's up with him. He just woke up from a nap. That's why it's so funny. I've been completely apathetic to dogs my whole life in the past eighteen months. I don't know if it was the pandemic or what I've become. Absolutely, I want a dog so bad. I don't think I can in my apartment. I don't think they'll let me.

But I'm absolutely I'm the kind of guy that like stops on the street and like elbows my girlfriend. God, look at that one. Look at that tiny we look at that French looking I've I've always been a little bit like that. I've always loved him, But I didn't think I've never had a dog before. Isn't And I didn't think I would be as like besotted as I as I am with him. I'm love It's weird. How did you land on on that for a name Wood toy story? Oh yeah, I'm a massive toy story fan.

It is. I think the soundtrack is sensational. I've loved it for that reason my whole life, since I first saw when I was a kid. And um, it also means that I can now get another dog. Com buzz. I was gonna say, it's been a pleasure talking to my last question before I let you go. Has there been a silver lining of this last year for you or a year and a half now I should say, WHOA. I mean, I got a dog that was amazing. That's

so that is one silver lining. But I think it made me feel incredibly, incredibly, incredibly lucky and thankful to have to be able to do this because there was a moment really where I thought it was all going away. I thought, if we can't do any touring, like, how can we? I'm not sure we can survive as a as a band. This might be done, This really might be done. And luckily, very luckily the album did okay

and we're able to come back and do it. Just made me so thankful for the people who made that possible. Is everyone, everyone who listens to the music and has honestly, but that's that's what gets me up in the morning, is seeing how people have reacted to the music and the art right that people have made around it. It's this year has made me feel incredibly thankful and lucky for for all of those people. So thank you so much for your time today. Your music has been a

real pleasure. No thanks for thanks for having me on It's a real treat to speak to you, of course, and Woody, it was great to have you as a cameo on here. He keeps yawning. I think he's he thinks I'm boring. M m. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.