Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan runt Hog,
Speaker 1: but enough about me. My guests Today first scaled the
Speaker 1: charts with his Banded Glass Animals and with their platinum
Speaker 1: track Gooey, a delectable pop confection that blends electro instrumentation
Speaker 1: with R and B rhythmic sensibilities. They followed it up
Speaker 1: with further hits like Life Itself and Youth. Then an
Speaker 1: accident brought the music to a sudden and terrifying halt.
Speaker 1: Drummer Joe Seaward was struck by a truck as he
Speaker 1: wrote his bicycle, requiring a lengthy period of rehabilitation. As
Speaker 1: Seaward recovered, my Guest underwent a creative reset. He began
Speaker 1: writing and producing for other artists, and he began to
Speaker 1: look inward. The result is Dreamland, his most personal and
Speaker 1: vulnerable work to date, crammed with references to his nineties
Speaker 1: childhood and though sometimes painful lessons of adolescence. Released last August,
Speaker 1: the album features the global smash heat Waves. It's a
Speaker 1: deceptively mournful earworm steeped in isolation, Lone This and the
Speaker 1: Longing for a lost loved one. The song has been
Speaker 1: remixed a number of times by the likes of Diplow,
Speaker 1: Oliver Helden's Sonny Forda Written, and most recently, and Your
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to welcome the lead singer and composer
Speaker 1: of Glass Animals, Dave Bailey. Absolute pleasure, Thank you for
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Oh my goodness, so much
Speaker 1: to ask you about. First off, keet waves is blowing
Speaker 1: up around the world. Did you have any indication when
Speaker 1: you were writing it that it would resonate in such
Speaker 1: a big way? You can never already aim for. I
Speaker 1: feel like when you sit down to write dong, you
Speaker 1: really have no idea what it's gonna come out. It's
Speaker 1: like I always is the fishing analogy. You might have
Speaker 1: heard it before, but it's a bit like fishing. You
Speaker 1: just kind of throw your rod in and normally you
Speaker 1: catch weeds all to eat or something, but heat Waits's
Speaker 1: just it kind of just jumped in the boat. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's actually quite a nice fish.
Speaker 1: And I actually tried to give it to someone else.
Speaker 1: I was right. I was writing for someone else's record
Speaker 1: for a little bit around that time, and I tried
Speaker 1: to give it to them, and they didn't want it.
Speaker 1: Time to write the Glass Animals album, I kind of
Speaker 1: went through a bunch of old tracks and I found
Speaker 1: I found this, and I was like, oh, I actually
Speaker 1: quite like that. It's good. The song is a kind
Speaker 1: of a unique part of its genesis, one that I
Speaker 1: can't really think of for any other tough forty song
Speaker 1: wearing I think Johnny Depp was the first person on
Speaker 1: the planet besides you to hear it. Do I have
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? I mean it's true, It's true through
Speaker 1: absolutely completely unintentional in every way. I was just in
Speaker 1: the studio Very Very is a big studio complex in
Speaker 1: North London. They're like five rooms in this in this complex,
Speaker 1: and I was there really late at night, and I
Speaker 1: thought I was alone and I was just list I
Speaker 1: think i'd finished the song at that point. Basically, it
Speaker 1: came together really quickly, in about an hour, and I
Speaker 1: was listening to kind of last final playback and blasting
Speaker 1: it and the song finished. I had someone tinkering on
Speaker 1: a piano behind me, and I've really scared me because
Speaker 1: if I was alone and turned around and it was
Speaker 1: just some long hair kind of drooping over the piano
Speaker 1: and I was like, who who are you? And they
Speaker 1: turned around and it was it was Johnny Depp. So crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was with another artist and another studio, I think,
Speaker 1: assuming me making some music and he got lost on
Speaker 1: the way to the toilet. It was gonna give you
Speaker 1: like PTSD. Here's something. Every time you think you're alone,
Speaker 1: you check over your shoulder and make sure. Johnny Depp's like,
Speaker 1: not just there. I do that, know. I actually so
Speaker 1: tempted to just like get a mirror, would be so
Speaker 1: now I couldn't look at myself when I'm making music.
Speaker 1: That freaked me out. He said. The song came together
Speaker 1: in like an hour. Is that? I mean? Usually we
Speaker 1: hear about songs that have been lavished over for months
Speaker 1: and months. Did you find that the best songs come
Speaker 1: come quickly? I do. I feel like at least all
Speaker 1: of the ideas come quickly, and then sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to sieve through if you start with has potential. Like
Speaker 1: some chords that really have tent I think you know
Speaker 1: they have potential and you know that they're good because
Speaker 1: loads of other ideas just start coming of the vocal lines.
Speaker 1: They just end up kind of coming coming out they
Speaker 1: right themselves, and then the drums happen and the base
Speaker 1: happen and it all just flows out. Sometimes you end
Speaker 1: up with way too much stuff, and I feel like
Speaker 1: that's when it can take a long time to write
Speaker 1: a song, where either when you're like missing one thing
Speaker 1: that you just can't work out, or you have so
Speaker 1: much stuff that you have to sieve through it for
Speaker 1: like find out which elements and which about kind of
Speaker 1: subtractive in a weird way. But this one just kind
Speaker 1: of happened, and if everything just fit it was it
Speaker 1: was very lucky. What was that all? Quote is somebody
Speaker 1: was talking to a sculptor and very fair might have
Speaker 1: been wrote down or something, and said, how do you
Speaker 1: how do you do that? How do you take you know,
Speaker 1: how do you get the beautiful human form from this
Speaker 1: big block of marble? And I think you said, I
Speaker 1: think it was him, might have been somebody else said
Speaker 1: I just take away everything that doesn't look like a person.
Speaker 1: And of course to him that made total sense, but
Speaker 1: to the rest of us, it's, uh, it's magic. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: I feel like writing songs work both ways. Either you
Speaker 1: kind of throw everything at it and you end up
Speaker 1: with a block of marble, then you don't have to
Speaker 1: chip away at and to resemble a song, or you're
Speaker 1: just kind of delicately balancing things. And I feel like
Speaker 1: with heat Ways, I was delicately balancing and then it
Speaker 1: just like an hour later, I sat back and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh wow, everything's balance. It's so crazy. So
Speaker 1: much of the song deals with isolation and disconnection and
Speaker 1: and loneliness in a lot of ways. How much of
Speaker 1: the track was influenced by by the pandemic lockdown at
Speaker 1: a time when you know we're all sort of feeling
Speaker 1: this way. It was pre pand I read it pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: It just happened to come at a time when I've,
Speaker 1: like our drumma basically had this terrible, terrible accident, and
Speaker 1: I think this. I kind of ended up finishing this
Speaker 1: song in the in the wake of that. And there's
Speaker 1: also I lost someone very close to me in their
Speaker 1: birthdays in June, so every time that their birthday starts arriving,
Speaker 1: I start to feel this really like I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I love myself. I basically kind of hide away
Speaker 1: for a bit. Basically, what I'm trying to say is
Speaker 1: I was because my drummer had this this accident, we
Speaker 1: kind of stopped touring, and um, I was feeling this
Speaker 1: kind of strange sentimental way because of the memory of
Speaker 1: my friend. I think I ended up in a weirdly
Speaker 1: similar state to how a lot of people were feeling
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. I noticed everybody was just digging up memories,
Speaker 1: digging up the past, and being really nostalgic. And my
Speaker 1: brain was just in that place when when writing this song.
Speaker 1: But I guess a year before that, maybe a year
Speaker 1: and a bit before pandemic actually happened. He mentioned your
Speaker 1: drummer Josie was act and how how's he doing now?
Speaker 1: Is he? He sounds like he's very much on the
Speaker 1: men's Yes. Sorry, I should always always forget to say that,
Speaker 1: but he's doing incredibly incredible back in the drums again.
Speaker 1: We played a lot of shows and he's better drummer
Speaker 1: than ever before. I think he was so determined to
Speaker 1: get back on the drum kit. I remember he sent
Speaker 1: me a video of him getting back on the drum
Speaker 1: kit for the first time after not being able to
Speaker 1: walk and talk take him a long time. He sent
Speaker 1: that video over and I just like cried. It was magical,
Speaker 1: so that is wonderful because I mean, you were a
Speaker 1: background in neuroscience, so you were uniquely you know, per
Speaker 1: to to know what kind of long road he was facing. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. Yeah, it was pretty It was horrifying when
Speaker 1: he was in the in the studio, in the hospital. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I went to I went to visit Amy had the
Speaker 1: accident in Ireland, and I just got on the first
Speaker 1: flight that I could as soon as I heard about
Speaker 1: it and went over there. And seeing him and seeing
Speaker 1: as a neuroscientist having done some neuroscience and then knowing
Speaker 1: how bad it could have been and where he is now,
Speaker 1: it's just it's actually a miracle. That is that is wonderful.
Speaker 1: That's that's so good to hear, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it has to be gratifying in some ways for
Speaker 1: you with a song that came from such a personal
Speaker 1: place for you is being received tens hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of people listening to the song right now. They came
Speaker 1: from such a I guess I'll say a dark moment
Speaker 1: for you that has to to feel good. I mean,
Speaker 1: kind of a making lemonade out of Lemons situation, I suppose, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is it did come from a dark moment, but I
Speaker 1: guess I was trying to I was trying to see
Speaker 1: a kind of an optimism. I always try optimism in
Speaker 1: there if it's if it's a dark song, and i'd
Speaker 1: find But when the pandemic came, I found myself in
Speaker 1: a really similar headspace to that. It was. It was
Speaker 1: it was tough over here. I'm sure it was the
Speaker 1: same in America. Over here, lockdown was tough, and it
Speaker 1: was tightened. A lot of people struggled, and then we
Speaker 1: needed that the kind of I don't know. I found
Speaker 1: myself listening to a lot of songs that had that.
Speaker 1: They were kind of sad songs, but had an optimism
Speaker 1: in their hope. It's funny. During the last eighteen months
Speaker 1: of the whole lockdown, I found myself listening to things
Speaker 1: that I haven't listened to since I was in high
Speaker 1: school in the early two thousand's. I mean, just musical
Speaker 1: comfort food, you know what I mean? Have you been
Speaker 1: that way? Absolutely with everything with my actual food as
Speaker 1: well my mom music. I was eating like peanut butter
Speaker 1: and jelly sandwiches again. I was watching The Karate Kid again.
Speaker 1: I was watching all these movies and shows that I
Speaker 1: grew up with, eating the food that I grew up with.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think it's when you can't go out
Speaker 1: and create new memories, you start like reliving the old ones.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing I only explanation I had for it.
Speaker 1: But I noticed it everybody I knew, all my friends
Speaker 1: sending me old records that they used to listen to
Speaker 1: and old like old films to watch and things. It's
Speaker 1: great and I got a lot of those references. I
Speaker 1: think I even picked up a dunk a Ruse reference
Speaker 1: in in the new album Dreamland, which came out last year.
Speaker 1: A lot of outlets have referred to the album as
Speaker 1: your memoir. I think the even Evening Standard, London Evening
Speaker 1: Standard had that in the headline. What do you think
Speaker 1: of that categorization? That's I never really I guess I
Speaker 1: didn't really think about it like that when I was
Speaker 1: writing it. But also my memoir was a bit thin.
Speaker 1: I don't think write a memoir when you're like eighty
Speaker 1: and you've like lived and have some actual perspective. But this,
Speaker 1: I think this album is less like I don't really
Speaker 1: know if it comes to any conclusions. I guess it's
Speaker 1: just rather than a memoir. It's more just like diving
Speaker 1: head first into the past and not just appreciate that
Speaker 1: it's okay to not no diving into it. I feel
Speaker 1: like in a memoir you'd have some kind of conclusion
Speaker 1: about your life. There there's no conclusions in this record.
Speaker 1: It's just embracing the fact that it's okay to be
Speaker 1: confused and not no answers. I was gonna say, I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of messages of acceptance in in the songs.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, it's acceptance and just again writing that,
Speaker 1: like not not knowing the answer and just kind of
Speaker 1: being okay with that. I think I think growing up,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Texas, and there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of as a boy growing up in Texas, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that you're kind of expected to do,
Speaker 1: and I never fit into any of those categories. I
Speaker 1: was never you know, I never played sports. I was
Speaker 1: quite small, and I never really did the things that
Speaker 1: they thought I should do at school and never fit
Speaker 1: in for that reason. And this this, I guess there's
Speaker 1: a sense of me just being like, that's actually what
Speaker 1: makes us all our own people. It's not not necessarily
Speaker 1: thing in doing your own doing your own thing, and
Speaker 1: that's that's actually good. Oh absolutely, I think that's that's
Speaker 1: such an important message to get out there. And I
Speaker 1: think that we need to get to two people earlier
Speaker 1: in their lives too, Is it really? Because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a point in so many kids lives when
Speaker 1: they're told, okay, you know, put the guitar down, put
Speaker 1: put the you know, paintbrush down or whatever, gets serious
Speaker 1: as opposed to just letting them sort of sort of be.
Speaker 1: And I know that the name of the album Dreamland
Speaker 1: was taken for something a teacher actually said to you, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of kind of directly references that it was
Speaker 1: my teacher. I think she was my social studies teacher.
Speaker 1: She was amazing. I actually really loved her as a teacher.
Speaker 1: She was amazing. And she used to just snap her
Speaker 1: fingers to say they pay attention, like you're in dreamland again.
Speaker 1: I need you to focus. And that's it stuck with
Speaker 1: me my whole life. I was always drifting off, I know,
Speaker 1: which always catch myself going into into dreamland until this
Speaker 1: very day. It's healthy. I was gonna say, you say
Speaker 1: that like it's a bad thing. Oh, I know. I
Speaker 1: think it's a great thing to do. It's been particularly
Speaker 1: helpful like making music. That's just a little bit earlier
Speaker 1: with with the Genesis of heat Waves. But your prior album,
Speaker 1: How to Be a Human Being that was was almost
Speaker 1: like a series of short stories, like from a fiction writer,
Speaker 1: a lot of character studies in the songs. What was
Speaker 1: the catalyst for sort of this this more autobiographical, you know,
Speaker 1: memoir shift. Was it just just sort of the the
Speaker 1: you know, looking inward like you mentioned earlier, or was
Speaker 1: there was that an avenue that you wanted to go
Speaker 1: towards in your music and you wanted to sort of
Speaker 1: build up confidence by writing about other people first and
Speaker 1: then tackling what was inside. I'm never really wanted to
Speaker 1: write about myself, but just I kind of started doing
Speaker 1: it because I was writing songs for other people. That's
Speaker 1: really easy to write about yourself or like a person
Speaker 1: story because you're not singing it, no one actually applies
Speaker 1: it to you, and you can can tell all your
Speaker 1: great secrets. That That's kind of what started. And then
Speaker 1: there was a song I think the first time I
Speaker 1: did it in a Glass Animals song was there's a
Speaker 1: song called Agnes on the end of album, to the
Speaker 1: end of that process that writing that album and I
Speaker 1: actually didn't want it was too personal for me. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to put it on the album. But the
Speaker 1: the Joe actually I'm Druna convinced convinced me too, and
Speaker 1: we did it. In The response from fans to that
Speaker 1: song was like absolutely life changing. It was a really
Speaker 1: it was a really hard thing to write about it.
Speaker 1: But then the like people I don't know, we got
Speaker 1: like letters from fans saying that song really spoke to
Speaker 1: them more so than any other song we'd ever released,
Speaker 1: and that really meant a lot to me that if
Speaker 1: you can write something so personal and be so honest
Speaker 1: in the song and it affects people like that, maybe
Speaker 1: it's it's okay to try it again. And I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess. I also realized that a lot of my
Speaker 1: favorite songs and favorite song writes in the past, that
Speaker 1: is that's what they did. They wrote really personal things
Speaker 1: and people it made them feel like. Those songs made
Speaker 1: me feel less alone. When I was feeling strange, I
Speaker 1: would listen to The Beach Boys, listened to I don't Know,
Speaker 1: I just read, I listened to my favorite songs and
Speaker 1: feel comfortable, like some like these are my heroes and
Speaker 1: they've they're feeling a bit out of sorts, they're feeling strange,
Speaker 1: so it's okay. It kind of justifies the way that
Speaker 1: you're feeling. And I just thought, maybe maybe I could
Speaker 1: do that for one person. Maybe it sounds like a
Speaker 1: lot more than one person. You you set me up
Speaker 1: perfectly to talk about I'm almost embarrassed to bring this
Speaker 1: album up because I feel, like I mentioned in every
Speaker 1: single episode, it is one of my my favorite pieces
Speaker 1: of music of all time. Pet Sounds by the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys head beach Boy Brian Wilson's meditation on his past
Speaker 1: and growing up in all those life moments, I get
Speaker 1: the feeling that Dreamland is sort of your Pet Sounds
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, that album was hugely influential, and
Speaker 1: on this one, as if you can hear it in
Speaker 1: the you know a lot of the sounds, and I
Speaker 1: actually went out and got a lot of the instruments
Speaker 1: and preambsence like I've got racks of gear here that
Speaker 1: I went out and found the stuff the Beach Boys
Speaker 1: used and the Beatles and also my favorite like more
Speaker 1: modern record producers a lot of amazing hip hop producers.
Speaker 1: They went out and source their samplers and and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, a lot of the guitars. And
Speaker 1: there's a mellotron here, which is a kind of keyboard
Speaker 1: that Beach Boys and the Beatles used a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite records top certainly, probably my favorite
Speaker 1: record of all time, top three for sure. I was
Speaker 1: just invited on a podcast called My Favorite Album, and
Speaker 1: that was the one I spoke up for about an
Speaker 1: hour all about why PET sounds so much, So it's
Speaker 1: very fresh on my mind. Wow, what other I mean?
Speaker 1: This is total gear nerd stuff. You have a melotron
Speaker 1: that's amazing. What other kind of stuff do you have?
Speaker 1: What have I got? I mean, I've got You'll have
Speaker 1: to come over for a tour one day. But I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of older guitars. I've got a half No.
Speaker 1: Five hundred, which is like a very classic Paul McCartney bass.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. Oh. I used one of those until I
Speaker 1: made the switch to a Rickenbacker bass like he did
Speaker 1: on Revolver, because I wanted a little heavier. I wish
Speaker 1: I could tell you more because I've just I've just
Speaker 1: done it. I've been using a Rickenbacker lately. That's all
Speaker 1: I'll say. Any any anymore on that or all I
Speaker 1: can say. That's all I can say. I've been using
Speaker 1: one quite a lot, and it sounds it sounds cool.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's something people were here at some point. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I can't wait to hear it. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I will very soon. It's it's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a great bass guitar. But yeah, I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of old instruments and a lot of old synthesizers here
Speaker 1: that really are just the classic. Yeah, there's classic sounds
Speaker 1: of that error. That's why I love so much about
Speaker 1: your music. And when you use these you know, melotrons
Speaker 1: and Nive compressors and vintage drum machines to make something
Speaker 1: that you know, all these these vintage pieces from fifty
Speaker 1: sixty years ago, that makes sounds that something like Timberland
Speaker 1: and dr dre with meg and it gets such a
Speaker 1: really unique blend, really unique sound. I mean that that
Speaker 1: was exactly the idea is because I was trying to
Speaker 1: kind of take all of my favorite records from growing
Speaker 1: up and just use them. So, yeah, I was recording
Speaker 1: a lot of those Beetles and Beach Boys instruments through
Speaker 1: the samplers the Dr Dre and Timberland might have used,
Speaker 1: and chopping basically chopping them up. So I think that
Speaker 1: kind of lends. Yeah, it takes those older instruments and
Speaker 1: brings them, brings a little bit more of a modern
Speaker 1: chopped sound to them. And then I was doing the opposite.
Speaker 1: I was rerecording those samplers and those drums that Timberland
Speaker 1: and Dr Drey might have used through all these old
Speaker 1: pre amps, yeah, that they used in the sixties. I
Speaker 1: read that you you write the majority of of your
Speaker 1: songs on on your first guitar, all classical guitar with
Speaker 1: nylon strings. That true. My dog is you can probably
Speaker 1: hit my dog going absolutely crazy. Hold on, what's up
Speaker 1: with I was biting? It's during his own tail. It's
Speaker 1: not me growling. It's a it's a small, tiny little dog.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have it here. Oh man, it never
Speaker 1: leaves my aside. Really, I write everything on it. And
Speaker 1: if if the song works on that and voice together,
Speaker 1: yeah you're golden. You want that skeleton, the backbone of
Speaker 1: the song to be as strong as possible, and then
Speaker 1: you can start adding all the big drums and little
Speaker 1: drums and the bass and the production details, but really
Speaker 1: you need that, You need the melody and the chords
Speaker 1: to just be solid as a rock before you start
Speaker 1: doing that. I think that's such a great technique. I
Speaker 1: think I read that. I think it was David Bowie
Speaker 1: would write some a lot of his early stuff, pre
Speaker 1: hunky Dory stuff on this old beat up acoustic TV
Speaker 1: string and people would say, you know, you can get
Speaker 1: you a better guitar. I said, no, if I can
Speaker 1: make it sound good on this, it'll sound good on
Speaker 1: on anything. Absolutely. Yeah. That was like. That was also
Speaker 1: what Tom Morello Rage Against the Machine used to. He
Speaker 1: used to write all of those huge riffs on a
Speaker 1: guitar like this one that's like, really what a rubbish
Speaker 1: classical guitar. And he was like, look if it sounds
Speaker 1: heavy on this little dinky, sound like when I've got
Speaker 1: it going through my through my amps with my electric
Speaker 1: and he was totally right. Those those riffs are absolute monsters.
Speaker 1: Have you been been feeling productive musically during during the
Speaker 1: last eighteen months during during lockdown? I have, yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: We released the album Wow nearly a year ago that
Speaker 1: has gone so quickly, weirdly quickly. It's time. The time
Speaker 1: warp of the pandemic is really Yeah. Anyway, we released
Speaker 1: the album most a year ago, so there was a
Speaker 1: lot of album launch stuff happening for about six seven
Speaker 1: months after that, and I feel like the last couple
Speaker 1: of months I've gotten to get gotten to make some
Speaker 1: music again, not necessarily Glass Animals stuff, quite a lot
Speaker 1: for some other projects, working with some feel so lucky
Speaker 1: to get to work with some really incredible, incredible people,
Speaker 1: and I've been doing doing a lot of that. Any
Speaker 1: names were able to share at this point or not
Speaker 1: quitely not, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I'm so excited
Speaker 1: for people to hear it. I feel very, very lucky.
Speaker 1: How often do you write? Is it is it a
Speaker 1: daily practice like some people run every day or do
Speaker 1: yoga every day, or is it just when you feel
Speaker 1: that you have something, something to say, something to put
Speaker 1: out there. I wish I could do it every day
Speaker 1: that there are the commitments around just being in you know,
Speaker 1: there's touring, there's a lot of set up for that,
Speaker 1: there's doing the artwork for stuff. It's it's quite a
Speaker 1: lot doing a like Glass animals record because there's like artwork,
Speaker 1: there's promo, there's touring, there's there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: around it, and I enjoy it all. But there are
Speaker 1: some days where I'm like, oh God, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's feel like writing today, and I can't because I'm
Speaker 1: in a tour bus. Don't get me wrong, I love
Speaker 1: I love touring. I have a lot of fun doing it,
Speaker 1: but I do I need to find more time to write,
Speaker 1: That's all I mean. It must have been difficult to
Speaker 1: release such a you know, a highly personal album in
Speaker 1: the midst of a pandemic. When you when promoting it's
Speaker 1: obviously a challenge. Was it like throwing your baby off
Speaker 1: a cliff or something? I mean, you really must have
Speaker 1: had to get really creative with all the different ways
Speaker 1: to promote it while you know, not leaving your home
Speaker 1: and your fans not leaving theirs. That was tough. That
Speaker 1: was really, really, really hard. And an album is that.
Speaker 1: It's exactly the analogy I always used. An album is
Speaker 1: like your baby, and you want your baby. I don't
Speaker 1: actually have kids, I don't know. You want your kid
Speaker 1: to have the best shot, the best chance, and to
Speaker 1: do well and to be happy. And make friends, and
Speaker 1: I guess we we wanted that for this album. We
Speaker 1: it was scary. We had conversations with our team managers
Speaker 1: that were like they were basically like, look, put the
Speaker 1: album out and then just start writing your next one.
Speaker 1: You might just have to write this one off. It
Speaker 1: was scary and it felt I was so reluctant. I
Speaker 1: was like, no way, this is my child and everything.
Speaker 1: So we just cranked up. We did everything we could.
Speaker 1: All the creative thing is that we could possibly imagine
Speaker 1: to try and replace that void that is pouring and
Speaker 1: you know, running around the world doing promo and that stuff.
Speaker 1: You had a fan remix competitions that must have been
Speaker 1: really cool for you to hear what people would do
Speaker 1: with with your songs and hearing your own music fresh again.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I guess touring normally gives
Speaker 1: you this like back and you know, you're playing something
Speaker 1: to someone, they're singing it back, and you get this
Speaker 1: nice back and forth and you feed off each other's
Speaker 1: energy and then the show hopefully is you get like
Speaker 1: a bit of magic and everyone's on this like wavelength.
Speaker 1: That's really nice. And the remix competition was just something
Speaker 1: it was like this. I thought it would be an
Speaker 1: interesting way to try and get a little bit of
Speaker 1: that back and forth that you can get a live show.
Speaker 1: So you give. We gave people the stems and all
Speaker 1: the parts we used to make songs, and people started
Speaker 1: putting them back together on their own way, and it
Speaker 1: was so I mean, some of the remixes are better
Speaker 1: than the original as far as I'm concerned. It was
Speaker 1: so nice to see that, and I some of the
Speaker 1: new remixes you have now all of our Malcolm on
Speaker 1: Tokyo Drifting and Brie Runaway on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
Speaker 1: There's a name from my childhood. My god, I saw
Speaker 1: that that song title. It's like, oh my god. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a brilliant show. It's a brilliant show. It's a
Speaker 1: brilliant song. Thanks. Thanks, Yeah. The bre run Brie is
Speaker 1: like one of my favorite you but she's not a
Speaker 1: new artist past. I've discovered it relatively recently and she's
Speaker 1: absolutely one of my favorites. She's incredible. She crushed it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of getting creative, I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: the the Space Ghost Coast to Coast video. For those
Speaker 1: who haven't seen it, it's kind of like a game
Speaker 1: of the Sims that's been hacked and all the characters
Speaker 1: are are are gay, running around, sometimes naked, sometimes not dancing.
Speaker 1: How how did this come about? It's I've never seen
Speaker 1: a video like this in my life. Well, I used
Speaker 1: to not really like making music videos. They always kind
Speaker 1: of scared me and I never liked being in them.
Speaker 1: That always really freaked me out. But then yeah, the
Speaker 1: pandemic happened. I was like, look, we've got to get
Speaker 1: super This is how people are going to be digesting
Speaker 1: the music. They're gonna be watching the video. They can't
Speaker 1: come see us live. This is the way that this
Speaker 1: is the like the way that people might get some
Speaker 1: context around the song. So we've got we just started
Speaker 1: thinking extra hard. But everyone was locked down in England.
Speaker 1: We were allowed out for I think like an hour
Speaker 1: a day for exercise at that point, and we had
Speaker 1: to make music videos like this, like so we had
Speaker 1: to get like super crazy creative. I made a music
Speaker 1: video in my kitchen and made a music video on
Speaker 1: the street outside my house for heat waves. Was like
Speaker 1: went and put a little notice that is through everyone's
Speaker 1: mailboxes saying like look what I'm going to walk down
Speaker 1: the street at seven o'clock tonight, will you just film
Speaker 1: me out your window on your phone and then uploaded
Speaker 1: to the drop box and that that worked. And then
Speaker 1: this one the director as a friend of mine, Max
Speaker 1: is genius. I was like, look, you come to the
Speaker 1: park near my house that I can see through my window.
Speaker 1: I'll use a camera that I have with a super
Speaker 1: super long lens and film you and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to multiply are you like you were in a computer game?
Speaker 1: And it works so well because the lyrics reference like
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto and James Double. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you ever played the N sixty four, But there's Golden Eye.
Speaker 1: I have one hooked up on my TV right now.
Speaker 1: Golden Eye and Mario Carter the only two games I
Speaker 1: have named genuinely the same, the best ones. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but he just took that to another level. Many I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm going to make the freakiest thing that I
Speaker 1: can And he definitely did it. It was genius. Is
Speaker 1: it is really incredible? Definitely definitely something to see. You
Speaker 1: recently performed in front of real, live human beings at
Speaker 1: the the Billboard Music Awards. How is it being back
Speaker 1: out there. I mean, how is it like actually performing
Speaker 1: for people again? Scary? Really, I get a little bit
Speaker 1: nervous always before going on stage. I'm not a natural.
Speaker 1: I'm quite shy naturally. I get a little bit nervous
Speaker 1: before shows in general, and that is shocking to hear.
Speaker 1: Look watching that performance, I distinctly thought, my god, it
Speaker 1: was like a swan coming in for landing. It was
Speaker 1: just effortless. I usually get nervous for like the first
Speaker 1: minute or something, and then it's then you're kind of
Speaker 1: in and it's okay. You're like, oh, okay, we're doing this. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you just ride. You just go and do it
Speaker 1: and finish it. And it was it was fun by
Speaker 1: the end of it. I was really enjoying it. But
Speaker 1: the first minute, yeah, it was pretty I was pretty scared.
Speaker 1: And you've got the tour announced for I think in August.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's got to be great just to you know,
Speaker 1: to have the crowd singing your song back at you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's gonna be unique for you because it's
Speaker 1: not like you're going out there with a new song
Speaker 1: to play for the first time to the crowd. You
Speaker 1: go out there and it's already a hit, so everybody
Speaker 1: already knows it from the Get Girl. That's gotta be cool.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be cool, It's gonna
Speaker 1: be I think it's gonna be absolutely euphoric, just so
Speaker 1: many reasons, Like it's so strange to have had actually
Speaker 1: just not play these songs at all yet. And I
Speaker 1: think also because Joe coming back on the drums and
Speaker 1: playing like big shows for the first time since he's
Speaker 1: had his accident. The combination of that and live music
Speaker 1: coming back for the first time and having not been
Speaker 1: able to play these songs yet in the album haven't
Speaker 1: been out for years, or just going to culminate in this.
Speaker 1: It's going to be amazing. I am so excited. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see Glass Animals out there against soon.
Speaker 1: It's going to be wicked. Please come whenever, whenever you can,
Speaker 1: whenever we get I think when do we head out
Speaker 1: end of August, we head out to the States? Absolutely
Speaker 1: how old he's a year and a bit. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: still kind of Yeah, he's an adult. Really, he knows.
Speaker 1: He's rowling up the microphone right now. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's up with him. He just woke up from a nap.
Speaker 1: That's why it's so funny. I've been completely apathetic to
Speaker 1: dogs my whole life in the past eighteen months. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was the pandemic or what I've become. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I want a dog so bad. I don't think I
Speaker 1: can in my apartment. I don't think they'll let me.
Speaker 1: But I'm absolutely I'm the kind of guy that like
Speaker 1: stops on the street and like elbows my girlfriend. God,
Speaker 1: look at that one. Look at that tiny we look
Speaker 1: at that French looking I've I've always been a little
Speaker 1: bit like that. I've always loved him, But I didn't
Speaker 1: think I've never had a dog before. Isn't And I
Speaker 1: didn't think I would be as like besotted as I
Speaker 1: as I am with him. I'm love It's weird. How
Speaker 1: did you land on on that for a name Wood
Speaker 1: toy story? Oh yeah, I'm a massive toy story fan.
Speaker 1: It is. I think the soundtrack is sensational. I've loved
Speaker 1: it for that reason my whole life, since I first
Speaker 1: saw when I was a kid. And um, it also
Speaker 1: means that I can now get another dog. Com buzz.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's been a pleasure talking to
Speaker 1: my last question before I let you go. Has there
Speaker 1: been a silver lining of this last year for you
Speaker 1: or a year and a half now I should say, WHOA.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got a dog that was amazing. That's
Speaker 1: so that is one silver lining. But I think it
Speaker 1: made me feel incredibly, incredibly, incredibly lucky and thankful to
Speaker 1: have to be able to do this because there was
Speaker 1: a moment really where I thought it was all going away.
Speaker 1: I thought, if we can't do any touring, like, how
Speaker 1: can we? I'm not sure we can survive as a
Speaker 1: as a band. This might be done, This really might
Speaker 1: be done. And luckily, very luckily the album did okay
Speaker 1: and we're able to come back and do it. Just
Speaker 1: made me so thankful for the people who made that possible.
Speaker 1: Is everyone, everyone who listens to the music and has honestly,
Speaker 1: but that's that's what gets me up in the morning,
Speaker 1: is seeing how people have reacted to the music and
Speaker 1: the art right that people have made around it. It's
Speaker 1: this year has made me feel incredibly thankful and lucky
Speaker 1: for for all of those people. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for your time today. Your music has been a
Speaker 1: real pleasure. No thanks for thanks for having me on
Speaker 1: It's a real treat to speak to you, of course,
Speaker 1: and Woody, it was great to have you as a
Speaker 1: cameo on here. He keeps yawning. I think he's he
Speaker 1: thinks I'm boring. M m. We hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows,
Speaker 1: check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.