Live Review: Glass Animals, Yeo

There's a queue outside on the pavement. Yes, even if you're on the guestlist. Once inside, there are lots of top knots in the building – on ladies and gents – and it's a who's who of industry types lured by hype. Yeo supplies some chilled beats while members of Glass Animals are scattered throughout the crowd, watching unharassed. A nearby onlooker weighs in, "I dunno, the music is just, like, very, very old."  That's a bit harsh, there's nothing wrong with retro stylings. Yeo tells us he's left a box of temporary tattoos and download cards at the sound desk for those who wish to help themselves. He then busts out a shiny white keytar. Yeo's Steve Winwood cover (Higher Love) is a showstopper and should conclude his set.

As Glass Animals make final soundcheck tweaks onstage, drummer Joe Seaward switches on his Beyoncé fan. It's a fashionably late start, with bassist/keyboard player Edmund Irwin-Singer wandering through the crowd toward the band room at 10.16pm. Their intro tape kicks in: Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotize. "Whassup!?" enquires frontman David Bayley. "We're Glass Animals!" Psylla opens and a neighbour in the crowd shares that it's “solid”. Seaward drums in profile. Is this becoming a thing? There are pretty girls in the front rows, which is always a good sign (even if one is munted and another dances like a stripper). Bayley dances like a marionette doing the Bananarama Venus dance, in the best possible way. The dual background vocals of Irwin-Singer  and guitarist/synth man Drew MacFarlane benefit from their choir backgrounds and add celestial majesty. Bayley intros “a brand new one, no one's heard it before" and the sample sounds like Pop Rocks exploding in your receptors. Bayley's lyrics don't so much matter and could be sung in a foreign language – it's the tone, melody and rhythms that are so captivating in a Massive Attack kinda way.

For an encore, Glass Animals preview their Like A Version for this Friday morning: Kanye West's Love Lockdown. Their use of samples is inspired, particularly the sharp inhalation punctuation that breathes unexpected life into the original and makes us sway. "I'm sorry to say that we've only got nine songs and we've played them all, so we're gonna do…" Bayley coaxes. Crowd: "GOOEY!!!!!" The frontman checks, “Gooey?" And so it is. You know the noise throughout this song that sounds like a rubber duckie being stepped on repeatedly to the beat? It's triggered via drum pad!

There will be a lot of pre-orders on Glass Animals' debut album ZABA after tonight. And this will be one of those annoying gigs if you weren't there, because people who were present are gonna bang on about how wicked it was. Glass Animals better enjoy watching support acts from the audience while they can.  

UPDATED: Our reviewer previously referred to the Higher Love track as a Whitney Houston cover - of course Steve Winwood originally recorded it in 1986. Houston recorded her version in 1990.