“The sequel’s gonna hurt,” Dave Bayley sings before ‘Show Pony,’ the opening track of Glass Animals’ fourth album, I Love You So F***ing Much, bursts into life. This album serves as a post-mortem of the tumultuous years that made the Oxford quartet the biggest British band in the US, breaking every record with their mega-hit ‘Heat Waves.’ Told through a sci-fi lens with a distinct 80s feel, the record shifts away from the tropical pop of their biggest hits towards crunchier rock sounds that reflect their recent turbulence.
“It was a beautiful rollercoaster ride that dumped us out the other end,” Bayley told Rolling Stone UK about the madness surrounding the band’s 2020 album Dreamland. I Love You So F***ing Much was written unexpectedly over a two-week period when Bayley was stranded in a creaking hilltop house in Los Angeles. “I’m so happy / This is just where I wanna be,” he sings with a side-eye on the aptly titled ‘whatthehellishappening’. Narratively, the album sees Bayley stripping away the awards shows, pandemic-era touring, and streaming stats, returning to the fundamentals, hence its bold title. Pitting an existential crisis against personal love stories through the prism of space, it plays out as a euphoria moment of clarity after a storm. While the album’s central tension comes through loud and clear at times—superb lead single ‘Creatures in Heaven’ tells a love story with power and tenderness—at other times, it gets buried under the (admittedly innovative and exciting) production.
After the success of ‘Heat Waves,’ several producers offered their services for Glass Animals mk. 4, but Bayley kept the project close, writing and producing it entirely on his own—a wise choice. His unique, wide-ranging production style keeps the album’s charm intact. I Love You So F***ing Much is dirtier and less idealistic than the hits that got Glass Animals to this point, but there is power and purpose in delving deep and sifting through the wreckage.
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