Interview: Glass Animals

We are big fans of all things Glass Animals here at Stereofox (I think they are slowly creeping to the top of our list together with mr. Chet Faker), so it was hell of a happy day, when I could catch up with Joe (drums) before their show in Munich and talk about all sorts of things: from his favourite cartoon and anthropology to the lyrics meanings.

These guys are going to be so big. Now - time for our interview!

Your album is really trippy, like, I properly zoned out when I was listening to it for the firs time, so was this the purpose or was it something you’ve accidentally achieved?

Joe: No, I don’t think we really set out to make it trippy. The only thing is that we went into the record thinking about trying to make an album, which would work as a whole. It probably sounds trippy because Dave is listening to a lot of psychedelic music, there is also a lot of grooves, it is quite groove based record, it gets you into psyching out, and it’s quite spacey as well. So I guess a combination of all those things…But no, it was definitely not an intentional thing.

What was the weirdest or coolest fan art you have received so far? Because you have kind of a weird sound, so I reckon you’d be getting a lot of weird stuff as well.

Joe: Yeah, we do! There are quite a few strange things, like people print a lot of photos of us, like they find photos of us on the Internet and they print them off, which is quite weird. And then there is this girl in New York, and she’s drawn this amazing album cover that we’ve done. She’s an illustrator and it’s really small, like an IPhone size, and she’s drawn by hand an exact replica, it’s fucking amazing! And looks like a proper vinyl cover, like it folds and everything, so that was really amazing. So yeah, we do get amazing stuff, sometimes strange art, but it’s cool, I quite like it.

Videos - are you guys involved in making them somehow? Do you give the directors the ideas of what you want it to look like or do you have a guy you fully trust?

J: All the videos up until “Gooey” and then actually “Pools”, they’ve been quite collaborative. We would come up with an idea, like a concept, I guess, and then I actually found this guy from LA Rafael Bonilla Jr., who is a young amazing artist, who makes videos from clay. I found one of his videos and so I sent him an email "would you be up for a music video?" together with the song. And he really liked the song and he did it, so we said: “these are the colors, this is the kind of world that we feel exists, these are some themes that it is about”, and he took all of it and interpreted in his own way, and he came back to us and it was amazing, really beautiful. He put his spin on it, but kept all of the things we wanted, which was amazing. So we did the “Exxus” video, then “Pools” and “Psylla”.

Now “Gooey” video is different, we were on tour when that was being made, so we didn’t really have much time to think about it, but we had lots of people sending us ideas, so there was one we thought was really cool.

Have you ever tried bone-breaking?

J: No, I haven’t! But it’s really cool, isn’t it? These guys are amazing! Again, that was more of a concept. "Hazey" video was someone else’s idea, their interpretation of music, which was really cool, I really liked that idea a lot, it was beautiful. And these guys are so young, they are like 16-17, and they’ve gone on to do amazing stuff. The main guy has been doing massive stuff, like big performances, talking to famous people on TV. I think they will be really successful.

Do you remember your first gig together? It’s a disaster for most of the bands I talked to, so how did it work out for you?

J: Yeah, it was horrible, absolutely horrible. I can’t believe someone would actually let us do it. We were so bad, we had 2,5 songs and we played them very badly. We played right opposite Dave’s house in Oxford where we’re from, in this pretty little pub...It was horrible, we were all terrified. It was quite funny, yeah. There were about 10 people there, so not many people saw us and they have probably forgotten that. We erased that from their memories. But yeah, it was funny, I’m glad you haven’t seen that.  

You have Winnie the Pooh references in “Gooey”, but is it your favourite cartoon? If not, which one is?

J: No, it’s not! I used to really really love this cartoon called “Sharky and George”, I don’t know if you have it here. It was like a cop show with a shark and a tiny little fish, and they were detectives, they were crime busters of the sea. It was really funny. And the sharks were like Italian gangsters, it’s really old, but really fucking good. Winnie the Pooh was cool, but it was not really my thing. I mean he’s a cool character. I really liked all those Disney films when I was young. But yeah “Sharky and George” is my favourite, you should look them up. I would show you if I had Internet here!

Why do you prefer not to talk about your lyrics meaning?

J: Dave told me once what one of the songs was about, very early on and it kind of ruined what the song was about for me. The song meant lots of things to me and I had my idea, I knew what it meant and so I was talking to Dave about the song and he said that’s what it means, so he kind of ruined it for me: I was like, no, it’s wrong, this is what it means. I never thought of the song in the same way again, so he just stopped telling people what it is about. If you care enough about the song then you can apply things personal to you, and if you are told what it is, it limits you, you won’t have that experience, it makes the song much harder to relate to. There is no right answer, really, because whatever you feel about the song is not wrong, you can’t be wrong, which is great. And there should be no right or wrong, it should be about your own interpretation and that’s what makes it interesting. It’s not that we don’t like talking about it, it’s just the way we feel about art.

You all decided to stop the project until you are done with your education. Do you ever see yourselves coming back to what you studied? What exactly did you study?

J: No, absolutely no! But I was never gonna do that anyway. I studied anthropology and I absolutely loved it, it was fascinating, really really interesting and made me think about things in a completely different way, but it was always going to be a degree and that’s it. And I think similarly for the other two, they studied music and for them it was always going to be one of the things that they really enjoyed and were good at, but it was never going to be what they did for the rest of their lives.

It was different for Dave, he studied medicine, and you study medicine because you want to be a doctor, you do it for your future career- so I think for him it was a much bigger thing to stop doing that than it was for me. I think the point of education is to expand your mind, learn to think and be self-sufficient, and I did that, just like the others.

Do you think Dave ever uses his degree in neuroscience for writing music?

J: Haha, no, I don’t think so. I think when he was studying medicine he met a lot of really cool people, like really interesting people, he always had crazy stories to tell, people whose brains were different. They would sit down and talk for hours and tell stories. In that respect he had quite a lot of likings lyrically maybe, and in his mind that influences the world in which the music is created. I don’t think he is thinking about music scientifically, that’s much more instinctive and natural.

The interview is almost coming to an end, but I have a few more questions. You have decided to cover Kanye West for triple J’s «Like a Version». Is there a special affection for Kanye or you were just digging the track?

J: It was just something we were listening at the time. I think Kanye is an amazing producer, he is very special, he is a real talent. Some people don’t like him, it’s either love him or hate him, there is not very much middle ground. Some of his production is forgettable, but when he gets it right, he gets it so right. Some of the production he does is so forward thinking, he is doing this before other people, he is pushing the boundaries and trying to stretch what is acceptable and it’s really brave. He has this kind of attitude like “I don’t give a shit about anything”, which is kind of what you have to do.

I have a lot of respect for him, but he is not my favourite. This happens to be one of those tracks. It is so well written, the fundamentals of the song are really simple: really catchy vocal and very minimal production. There were lots of things, which could be done to it, so we put our own spin on it and it’s easy when the thing you are using is quite simple, you can do more with it.

You guys are active online, replying to tweets and comments, but is Internet presence something you feel you have to do as an artist or are you enjoying being in touch with your fans online?

J: Hmm, strange, I don’t know about social media. I mean none of us use it in our spare time, it’s not our thing. It is something really important, because this is an opportunity for fans to get straight to the artist, and this is something that has never happened before in the history of music. It’s a relatively new phenomenon and the way how you can communicate with your favourite band. I mean you could send a fan mail, but nobody would ever read anything. So it’s a really cool idea. I mean it’s not the first thing we do in the morning, writing to people on twitter. We are trying to get better at it, it’s a hard thing to get right and it can engage you. I mean if my favourite band replied to me on Twitter it would make my day, I would be “holy fucking shit that’s cool”. There is this element to that, and we are aware of it. Writing to someone can really engage them and maybe they would come to the show or tell a friend about it. You have to think about it at times too, because we are such a small band in the grand scheme of the world and we have to work at it. The same is with performing, we have to perform well, and we have to work out how to perform well, so people come home and talk about how good the show was. This is the whole point of the music videos for the same reason. We are in a public eye even though in a small way. But yeah, it’s a good question, we are trying.

What’s currently on your playlist?

J: I could show you, wait a second, I will tell you exactly what I’ve been listening. Being in the van driving around is a great opportunity to listen to stuff I would never normally listen to, so this is what I’m trying to do.

I’ve been listening to Warpaint, D' Angelo, Kendrick, Hiatus Kaiyote (have you heard of them? These guys are actually amazing), Bonobo, some old soul stuff, Talking Heads, new Caribou record, loads of stuff, GoGo Penguin record is really good, I’ve been listening to Bob Marley. I kind of have phases when I listen to a specific record, or a lot of reggae, or a lot of whatever happens to be.

Stay up to date with the guys on the Glass Animal's artist page. Hope you enjoyed the interview!