Why Glass Animals Ditched Their 'Breaking Bad' Inspired Song Title

Last time Glass Animals toured our shores – for three intimate, East Coast club gigs in April before their spectacular debut album Zaba dropped – Seaward performed stage left, in profile. When asked whether this is still the case, he shares, “Well, it’s one of those things that we’re always tinkering with and fiddling with: sometimes I’m at the back, sometimes I’m stage left, I sometimes move myself further ‘round so I’m not as profile – I’m more, like, face-on. Drew [MacFarlane, guitarist/keyboardist] and Ed [Irwin-Singer, bassist/keyboardist] were experimenting with where they are too so it’s kind of quite fluid. It’s a very topical question if you’re a member of Glass Animals at the moment.”

Although Seaward agrees drumming off to the side in profile is “not the most engaging way of being a drummer”, he adds, “There are various quite boring reasons for doing it: one of which was just because it looks kind of different and is interesting, for that reason alone; but there are musical reasons why it’s helpful to not have the drums directly behind three microphones, ‘cause it gets very loud.” A-ha! So that’s where those fancy drum shields might be necessary. “Depending on how big the stage you’re playing is, those shields can be really helpful,” Seaward concurs. Even if they make you feel like a zoo animal? The drummer laughs, “He’s SO loud we had to put him in a cage!”

Spending some time with Glass Animals last time they were in town, their interest in our flora and fauna was endearing. “I did not see a koala,” Seaward despairs. “I saw a possum. We were all really shocked and kind of impressed that we’d seen a possum, which had a baby on it, yeah! Which was really, really cool. But all the Australian people we were with were just SO unimpressed. I think it must’ve been like seeing a squirrel [would be] for us. Um, and what else did we see? Various lizards and, yeah! We saw a dolphin with a surfer in a wave, which was very cool.” Although Seaward didn’t manage to get a photo of the dolphin surfing with a surfer, he “took a mental photo, which is still going strong”.

Perhaps Glass Animals will spot some koalas in their natural habitat en route to Falls, Lorne if they take The Great Ocean Road. “Oh, amazing!” Seaward enthuses. Much better to view the cuddly critters in this way rather than all drugged up ready for human contact, correct? “Yes, definitely. But are they not drugged up anyway? Doesn’t the eucalyptus get them really high?” We contemplate being reincarnated as koalas: “In the tree being wasted. You wouldn’t care about anything, yeah [laughs].”

"Drew can make me more angry than anyone else on this planet. We’re all like a big married couple, I guess."

Seaward estimates he’s spent a grand total of five days at home since aforementioned tour Down Under. “I did really very little,” the drummer recalls of this time spent in Oxford. “I just hung out and saw my girlfriend and my friends – who I hadn’t seen for a long time – and didn’t see anyone in the band, which was really nice, for five days and, yeah! It was great actually. It was really, really nice and I think we all felt recharged enough to go and do some more [touring].” So were there big hugs when Glass Animals reunited? “Probably, yeah,” Seaward laughs. “I gave Drew a hug when I saw him. I mean, we spend so much time together that it’s like having a kind of other family. I now have two families, which is cool, and I love them both equally so it’s good.

“Drew can make me more angry than anyone else on this planet. We’re all like a big married couple, I guess. But the thing is we’ve known each other for such a long time. I mean, we met when we were 12, 13...  We know where all the buttons are so it just depends on whether I want to make Drew cross – if I feel, like, in the mood where I want to piss him off, then I absolutely can do that quite easily. And I know the times when it’s worth me disappearing for an hour.”

When was a wee ’un, Seaward tells that his musician dad got really excited by the prospect of his son doing anything musical. “He was like, ‘Great, I’m gonna buy him a proper drumkit that will get him excited,’ ‘cause it was, you know, much louder and bigger and cooler and so he was really enthusiastic about it. And I tried playing the guitar, which I was very bad at. I sung for a long time and got bored of that.” Seaward acknowledges it was “probably quite disappointing for [his dad], because he really wanted someone in the family to do something musical”. “Now his wish has come true, which is good, but it took a while of disappointments I think, probably. Poor dad.”

He had a drum teacher for a spell, but Seaward explains: “I was such an annoying 11 year old that I didn’t want to do anything that involved being told what to do. So I tried for a while and then stopped, and then didn’t even think about the drums until I was about 20... But, I mean, I don’t know if I’d want an 11 year old playing drums in my house necessarily, so it probably was a good decision for everybody, I think.” So was Seaward’s kit in a garage or just in his house? “It was in my bedroom and then it just got moved to the roof under my house and gathered dust for about 15 years. And I still have it today, it’s the same drumkit that I have now.”        

As far as new Glass Animals material goes, Seaward says, “We’ve written beginnings of songs, um, nothing that’s been played yet. It’s definitely kind of in the pipeline.” Does this make encore time stressful? Because sometimes Glass Animals have been known to play Gooey again (not that we mind) as part of their encore. “Ah, yeah, it’s a bit stressful,” he allows. “It’s really hard at this stage – because obviously we don’t have hours and  hours of songs to play to everybody – but there’s enough I think, I hope. I mean, I think I’d be done by the time we were done, if you see what I mean: Better to leave people wanting more than kind of completely over-saturate their brains with Glass Animals.”