'Maybe I Was On Too Many Mushrooms': Glass Animals' New Album Was Simply Inspired

After negotiating the usual hiccups one expects when connecting/joining a Zoom meeting, Dave Bayley's smiling, waving form materialises on the iPad screen. Scanning Bayley's surrounds, I notice his background looks familiar. This is not unusual since lately we've been welcomed into the living rooms and home studios of many musicians thanks to the COVID-related live-streaming boom. But, in this case, Bayley's London home/studio actually features in the Dreamland film clip, which dropped back in May to announce the release of the title track from Glass Animals' third album. 

Shot on 21 April, 2020 while Bayley was in quarantine, the result is half-music video/half-'making of': we see him receiving the 'flat-pack music video' and instruction manual then actually setting up the desired visual universe as well as the video proper. "They gave me a 50-page instructional booklet," Bayley shares, "but I hate instructions so I just looked at the picture. That's what I do if I get stuff from IKEA: I don’t read the text... It was actually [filmed] in my living room and that was chaos!"

If you're yet to clap eyes on the Dreamland film clip, please do so then return to reading this. 

"The original idea - I actually wanted it to be really simple and I was just gonna sit on a skateboard and pull myself forwards towards a GoPro, but that spiralled out of control," Bayley reveals. "To kind of facilitate the whole thing, we got this skateboarding director Colin Read, who’s made a lot of amazing skateboard movies - we thought he’d be amazing at it, because he‘s quite DIY; lots of handheld-cam stuff - but he went all-in! He was just like, 'Send them our camera, 18 lights, all this track...' - and he went in deep!

"A whole truck pulled up outside my house - well, actually, down the road... I can’t believe how much shit they sent me! Like, 18 big-arse light fixtures and all of these huge metal stands for them to go on... It was just so much stuff to carry up three storeys and it was so heavy!... And then there was basically a roller-coaster [dolly] track in the middle of the room. Yeah! Then all my neighbours wanted to help me test it.

"But I also ended up using a lot of my own stuff - just stuff from my house - like, the TV, the tree [points tree out, over his shoulder] - that tree, isn’t it?... In retrospect, I really enjoyed it. There were definitely moments while I was going through it that I was just, like, 'Fucking hell! This is a lot for one person to do," he laughs. "By the fourth day – it took four days - I was like [makes the sound of an impatient horse]."

Our chat takes place around breakfast time. This may go some way towards explaining why so many food references jumped outta Glass Animals' delicious Dreamland record during my sneaky, final, pre-interview listen: "pancakes", "waffles", "melon and a coconut" and "hot pockets in the microwave", just to name a few. "I’m obsessed with food," Bayley allows. "There's loads of food [mentioned] in there. Yeah, I just find it kind of sets the scene quite well. Like, hot pockets, to me, are very much of an era... I grew up in America in the 2000s and that’s what I ate, literally, every day: hot pockets. I dunno, I like those kind of references; when I notice them in other people's songs they give me quite a lot of context."

And Bayley says he's observed his memory is triggered by specific songs. "I always have a song associated with memories," he admits, clicking a retractable pen with some regularity. "When I think of a certain time period, I often think of what I was listening to at that time." 

Dreamland is Bayley's 'autobiographical' album, complete with legit home-movie audio snippets that present as skits throughout - very hip hop, which Bayley definitely digs. Give Bayley's work with featured artists (see: Lose Control feat Joey Bada$$ and Tokyo Drifting feat Denzel Curry) a spin and you'll quickly suss this out. 

A cornucopia of delectable sonic textures swirl, crackle and pop throughout Dreamland like Willy Wonka's everlasting gobstoppers on the boil, which makes Bayley - who produced this set - the Willy Wonka of producers. "WHAAAAAT!?" Bayley cracks up. "That was my favourite book as a kid; I loved Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. Can I tell you a story?" Sure thing! "Okay, it kind of vaguely relates to Willy Wonka [laughs]. While I was starting this album - I was doing a session in a different studio, I was doing a different song; I had some extra time afterwards and so I was working on some stuff. I was working on the [Dreamland] track Heat Waves... I had got it pretty much done - like, to a good point - and I was sitting there listening to it really loud - like, blasting, blasting, blasting it! - and then the song stopped. And behind me I heard someone playing on the piano. And I turned and all I could see was this hair, a wine glass and a big spliff coming out from behind their ear. And I was like, 'Excuse me, hello,' and they were like, '[adopts low, gruff voice] Hello,' and I was like, 'Who are you?' And the person turned around on the chair, and it was Johnny Depp!

"It was so weird! And then we ended up talking for ages and he told me these stories. And he told me how he came up with the voice of Willy Wonka. He was like, 'When I was doing Willy Wonka - (and then he lit the spliff) - I just imagined George W Bush getting really, really, really, really stoned'... And he did this thing for me that was kind of an amazing thing to see: he started doing George Bush’s accent, would draw on the spliff and then slowly this morphed into the Willy Wonka accent!" 

WTF! Did Bayley pinch himself? That sounds somewhat like a trippy dream. "Maybe I was on too many mushrooms, I dunno," he chuckles. "No, it’s genuine! It's a real story. Actually happened. I have witnesses."

Having since revisited the film version of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory in which Depp stars as Willy Wonka, Bayley asserts, "I was like, 'Oh, my god! It totally makes sense!" 

Glass Animals were forced to cancel some tour dates at the tail end of 2018 after drummer Joe Seaward's bicycle collided with a truck in Dublin; injuries sustained included a broken leg and fractured skull. "Any time I think about it I get a bit funny," Bayley warns, "but at the same time his recovery’s SO amazing that it sends a shiver up my spine... I don’t know how much you ever fully recover from something like that, but he’s doing everything he used to do, pretty much." 

Prior to responding to his musical calling, Bayley was studying medicine with a specific focus on the human brain. At the time of the accident, Bayley confesses, "I kinda went into shock, but I stayed as optimistic as I could... I did medicine before I did music, so I knew it was really, really bad when I saw what had happened."

"I won’t go into graphic detail, but he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t move, so it was like - I didn’t know if he was gonna live. If he was gonna live, there was a really good chance that he was never gonna walk and talk.

"So I remember I kept telling his parents, 'It's gonna be fine, trust me. I’ve learnt about all this stuff, he’s going to be absolutely fine.' But inside, I didn’t know what to think."

Since Seaward has recovered like an absolute boss, Glass Animals briefly returned to playing shows before this pandemic shitstorm made gigging impossible. "We were on this little tour of America recently, before all this [COVID-19] kicked off," Bayley explains, "and we felt fucking lucky to be back. We were just, like, laughing and looking at each other - partly because we were playing these little venues and we couldn’t hear anything, or see anything, so we were just laughing and shouting at each other onstage. But it was SO nice to be back! When we can tour again, we will embrace every fucking second of it - I can’t wait!"