You may know Glass Animals as an Indie TripHop band from Oxford, England. They’re made up of vocalist Dave Bayley, guitarist Drew Macfarlane, bassist Edmund Irvin-Singer and drummer Joe Seaward.
The band recently released a new song and video, called Youth, from their album How to Be a Human Being. The track is about nostalgia and the strange mix of happiness and sadness that swirls around it. The song is sung from a parent to a child, and was inspired by a devastating story Bayley heard on tour about a mother.
How to Be a Human Being is the sophomore album from Glass Animals. It’s a different album in many ways than their debut ZABA, but it’s still a cohesive record with plenty of character and depth.
In How to Be a Human Being, each song is connected to the next in a kind of overarching story. The songs and the video for “Youth” are about a waitress who misses her son, while the music video for “Mama’s Gun” is about a housewife who hears voices and makes her husband go to “Neverland.”
When you look at the mood board for the album, it’s easy to figure out which song is about which character. That’s because all of the characters in How to Be a Human Being have backstories, and most have backstory that’s hidden from the listener.
That’s what makes How to Be a Human Being such an impressive record, and why the band’s fans will love it. There’s a strong sense of maturity on this record, which could have been an existential crisis album at times, but instead it’s an exercise in strength of character.
