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Glass Animals Essay

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Glass Animals is a four-piece art pop band from Oxford, England. As of 2016, they have released two studios albums - ZABA and How to Be a Human Being. ZABA was received well, having charted in several countries. Glass Animals are known for their distinct percussion and surreal soundscapes. Their style is often described as airy, and take a lot of influence from field recordings taken in rain forests, utilizing sound effects such as bird calls and elephant noises. One of the strongest aspects of How to Be a Human Being, released August 26, 2016, is the band’s ability to create an atmosphere. The tone and mood is extremely consistent, and it’s very enjoyable to listen to an album where the band has found a style and stuck with it, making …show more content…

This is clearly the sort of album where lyrics took a back seat to the music, and the lyrical quality definitely takes a hit because of that. However, this is hardly a problem because the lyrics are rarely intelligible anyway due to this album’s delivery and mixing.
The next song that I really enjoyed here was Mama’s Gun. This track has a great melody and the flute that begins the song really gives it a good start. The atmosphere here is adventurous and this is one of the only tracks where I think the vocals don’t fall flat. Glass Animals’ vocal delivery is very laid back and chill across the board, and other than on Poplar St, this is the only song whose instrumentation compliments that. The next song I really enjoyed was Poplar St. The instrumentation is really nice here, and the guitar was a nice touch that I think several other tracks could have benefited from as well, but Glass Animals decided not to utilize much guitar on this …show more content…

Cane Shuga and The Other Side of Paradise are, however, good songs as well and I really like their more glitchy/dance beats. Despite all of the flaws this album has that I’ve just pointed out, I enjoyed listening to this quite a bit and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for some well-made indie pop. The reason that I’ve been so harsh on this despite the fact that I like it is because I think that Glass Animals rely too much on a formula that definitely works for two or three songs in a row, but gets boring and old and makes songs blur together if you try to build an entire album with this very simple formula. And even though this formula is very simple, it’s also great fun to listen to and that’s why I like the tracks that just go the extra mile to change it up. If you like pop rock or indie pop, I think you will definitely like this album. Personally it took me a few listens to warm up to the style Glass Animals brings to the table here, but this is a very fun and accessible album despite an unfortunate lack of stylistic

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