Released: 10th July 2020
Rating: ★★★★
Dreamland sounds like a far-away kingdom where anything could happen – both good and bad – but under the blanket of it being just that, a dream. With ‘Dreamland’, Glass Animals third album, it’s unflinchingly real. How dreams are sometimes not fancy exaggerations but born purely out of the experiences that have been the pieces of their lives. For the good and bad, this is Glass Animals creating a world born in truth. It’s their most impactful album to date as a result.
Steeped and wrapped in denser production than ever before, throughout Glass Animals flex their creative muscles for a record that demands your attention as their biggest statement so far. From the title track’s opening salvo to introduce what’s to come, you’re transported into a journal of sorts – punctuated by home video snippets throughout. The fizzing soda-pop of ‘Tangerine’, ‘Your Love (Deja Vu)’ and ‘Hot Sugar’ ooze with a style that Glass Animals have become famous for, but it’s across the rest of the album that their true depth is shown. ‘Tokyo Drifting’ drops with a flair of bombast that can’t be stopped, and ‘Space Ghost Coast To Coast’ reels off Capri Sun’s, GTA and Pokemon over hypnotic beats. It all points to an album fully drenched with layers, bringing their most interesting production to date to combine hip-hop, electronica and pop for an insatiable taste that lingers at every stop. Even with that, its emotional core is, at times, devastating. The rising ‘It’s All So Incredibly Loud’ mirrors an overwhelming rush of anxiety and panic that sweeps over you but with glorious surround sound and ‘Domestic Bliss’ is a ripped raw questioning of relationships and the crumbling of a home it creates.
It perfectly captures what ‘Dreamland’ is. Not only the most ambitious Glass Animals album to date, and their most personal, it’s arguably their most rewarding collection too. By dipping into ‘Dreamland’ and finding the harsh realities of life there, they’ve created a new world to explore from their darkest time. A special band creating a special record, it should serve as their ticket to the biggest tables as a band incomparable to any other.
Jamie Muir
