Glass Animals

2012–15: Zaba and various EPs

Bandmates Bayley, Seaward, MacFarlane and Irwin-Singer were friends at secondary school in Oxford, forming Glass Animals in 2010 during the summer holidays while attending different universities in the UK. They first performed live at Oxford's Jericho Tavern on 9 April 2010 supporting Chapel Club. Their radio debut was on BBC Introducing in Oxford in June of the same year, with "Slikk Furr".^[9] The band released their debut EP, Leaflings, on 28 May 2012, which included the single "Cocoa Hooves". It was released on independent label Kaya Kaya Records, a subsidiary and imprint of XL Recordings (part of the Beggars Group of labels). Lead singer and guitarist Dave Bayley was attending medical school at King's College, London but left after Adele's producer Paul Epworth saw Glass Animals performing in London and signed them to his label Wolf Tone.

In 2013, the band released Black Mambo/Exxus EP in Europe, and Glass Animals EP in the USA. The online release of the track Black Mambo brought the band their first attention via a number of reviews and reposts on internet blogs.^[10] "We didn’t really know anything about the music industry or the music world. We were just trying to figure out who we were, what sounded good to us," said lead singer Dave Bayley when asked what the band was doing during the period of time between the release of "Black Mambo" and their debut album.^[11] The Glass Animals EP also saw the band collaborating with Jean Deaux, a soulful hip-hop teenager from Chicago, on a song titled "Woozy".

In 2014, the band made their first visit to the USA, performing 8 times at South by Southwest^[12]in Austin, Texas. released three more singles: Pools, Gooey, and Hazey, along with a short remix EP of Gooey that featured the song Holiest, a collaboration with Argentine indie pop singer-songwriter and producer Tei Shi.

All five singles (Cocoa Hooves, Black Mambo, Pools, Gooey, and Hazey) were featured on the band's debut album, Zaba (stylized as ZABA), which was released on 6 June 2014. The album received generally positive reviews and brought the band to over 7 million listeners on Spotify the following year, with the songs "Gooey", "Black Mambo", and "Toes" becoming the most popular from the album on Apple Music. Two deluxe versions of Zaba were released in August 2015.^[13] The Amazon version had exclusive stripped versions of the singles "Gooey", "Black Mambo", "Hazey", and "Cocoa Hooves", while the iTunes version included bonus tracks "Psylla" and "Exxus" (previously released on the band's second EP, Glass Animals) along with remixes of "Black Mambo" and "Gooey".

The band performed the single "Gooey" on Late Night with Seth Meyers^[14] in 2014, and again on The Late Show with David Letterman^[15] on 24 February 2015, and toured extensively after Zaba, visiting both hemispheres and played over 130 shows in 2015 alone. Their October 2015 US tour included two sold out shows at The Wiltern in LA and sold out shows across America including T5 in NYC, The Riverside in Milwaukee, and The Midland in Kansas City. A collaboration with American hip hop recording artist Joey Bada$$, titled "Lose Control", was released on 6 October 2015. The idea for the song was apparently sparked during a randomly shared studio session.

2016–17: How to Be a Human Being and tour

On 16 May 2016, the band released the lead single, "Life Itself", from their second album How to Be a Human Being.^[16] It features a more boisterous, percussion-driven sound than that of Glass Animals' previous singles, leading many fans to believe that the album's sound would set it apart from Zaba. "Life Itself" peaked at number 14 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and spent 26 weeks on Sirius XM's Alt-18 chart, peaking at number 1. Dave Bayley stated in an interview that the song was about "a sci-fi obsessed dude who spends most of his time alone inventing strange things and writing stories about ray guns or looking for aliens on Google Maps."^[17] A music video for the song was released on 7 June 2016. The band also created a website based on the character from "Life Itself".

On 25 July, a second single from the album, "Youth", was released along with its music video. The song is supposedly based on a devastating story that a stranger once told the band about her son. Dave Bayley said in an interview that the strange combination of happiness, sadness, and nostalgia in the song "kind of made me feel like my heart was being ripped apart but [was] also optimistic in a weird way... that combination of emotions is what this song is getting at."^[17] The band also revealed that the upcoming album would follow in the footsteps of singles "Life Itself" and "Youth"—each song would tell the story of a different character. On 15 August, the band announced on Twitter that a website for "Youth," Dizzy On Caffeine, had been released.

Four days before the release of the album, on 22 August, the band released a third single, "Season 2 Episode 3", about a girl who "spends her entire time watching TV, lounging around, not doing anything, being high, eating mayonnaise from a jar."^[18] It featured a prominent sample of the beat from "I Live Above the Hobby Shop" by Chicago synthesizer McFabulous. The song was used in Apple's "Shot on iPhone by Linda H." advertisement.^[19]

The full album, titled How to Be a Human Being, was released on 26 August 2016 by Wolf Tone and Caroline International in Europe, and Harvest Records in the United States. The album received critical acclaim for its "sense of wonder" and "immediate impression", though it was also met with some mixed reactions, for critics felt that it was somewhat premature. On 4 January 2017, Glass Animals performed their song "Pork Soda" from the album on the Late Late Show hosted by James Corden.

After their performance on the Late Late Show, Glass Animals visited Laneway Festivals in six different cities (Singapore, Sydney, and Auckland, among others). During their time in Australia, their three singles from How To Be A Human Being—Youth, Life Itself, and Season 2 Episode 3, respectively—came in at 38, 63 and 98 on Triple J's Hottest 100. Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley also collaborated with electronic musician and producer Flume during his Australian visit, his vocals appearing in Skin Companion EP II's track "Fantastic".^[20]

On 7 March 2017, Glass Animals released a website and music video for their track "Pork Soda" from How to Be a Human Being. A radio edit was then released, and "Pork Soda" was announced to be the fourth single from the album. On 9 June 2017, the band released a radio edit of "Agnes" and announced it to be the fifth single from their album. A music video for "Agnes" was released on 2 August 2017.

On the eve of Glass Animals' concert held at Leeds and Reading Festivals, Spin reported that their song "Pork Soda" and their previous stage decoration highlighting on pineapples might lead to the total prohibition of the fruit being allowed inside the concert. The magazine cited sources from the BBC that a spokesperson for both of the festivals expressed concern about too many pineapples being brought inside the venue might cause chaos and disorder. The official website of Reading Festival had already made explicit the new rule to ban pineapples at the concert a month leading up to the event^[21].

In July 2018, drummer Joe Seaward was seriously injured when he was hit by a lorry while cycling in Dublin. Joe's accident and recovery resulted in the band canceling their remaining tour dates for rest of the year.^[22]

Studio albums

Extended plays

Singles