Glass Animals - I Love You So F***ing Much

It’s almost impossible to comprehend, even now, just how much of a sleeper hit Glass Animals’ ‘Heat Waves’ was. Released in June 2020 ahead of the Oxford-formed band’s third album ‘Dreamland’, it took a record-breaking 59-week route to eventually top the US Billboard singles chart in early 2022. The song was technically ‘catalogue’ (an industry word for ‘old hat’, fact fans) at this point. Its prolonged success made for a double-edged sword for the outfit: Album Four could wait – but it was going to have to follow THAT. As it goes, it’s doubtful Glass Animals could’ve pitched ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ any better. As flush with confidence as an album from a chart-dominating outfit should be, opener ‘Show Pony’ does as its name suggests, entering the fray with gigantic production and a whip smart push-pull dynamic. It’s a record that fully embraces the concept of pop while simultaneously retaining the idiosyncrasies that gained the band its initial wonky indie-pop reputation. 

Take the bombastic ‘A Tear In Space (Airlock)’, on which Dave Bayley’s vocal hits new heights while also pronouncing “water” in a way that somehow belies both his American and British identities. Or ‘Creatures In Heaven’, during which he somehow manages to rhyme “making love”, “apartment” and “fake blood”. And while ostensibly less conceptual than previous records, Bayley isn’t afraid to leave in a few strange turns of phrase (‘White Roses’ with its unlikely “Let me dangle from you like a piece of meat”). That the record’s biggest curveballs are also its most conventional is ultimately ‘I Love You…’’s biggest triumph, however. ‘On The Run’ opens like a mashup of Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind’ and The Flamingos’ ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, only to crash into a rollicking, earwormy chorus, while epic closer ‘Lost In the Ocean’ makes sweet use of ‘50s doo-wop backing vocals. If ‘neo-croon’ isn’t already a thing, Dave just invented it. It’s ‘Wonderful Nothing’ that’s the ultimate star, though. What will undoubtedly read like a mess on paper is, in fact, a deliciously dark banger, as a theatrical, choral introduction makes way for a trap beat and a bassline that’s as EDM as it is Muse’s ‘Supermassive Black Hole’. Ultimately, ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ is as confident, self-aware and ambitious as a record by a band who’d rocketed skyward last time around should be.