Glass Animals

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Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | February 26, 2015 | 31

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MUSIC

Glass Animals

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A TOUCH OF GLASS: Joe Seaward, left, with the band

SO, are you ready for the tour?

We’ve had a couple of weeks off which has been blissful, but that’s about to come to a very abrupt end. This is my last day of freedom – that sounds ridiculous! But yes, very much, we haven’t been around England for a while touring, so it’s going to be really fun. I’m pumped. We’ve had enough rest to get that out of our systems, so everyone is ready.

How would you describe your sound to someone who hadn’t heard you guys before?

Haha, that’s the killer question! It’s so hard, it’s the hardest thing to do for me to describe the music. I think I’m probably the worst person to describe it. It’s like me asking you to describe yourself. I have no idea what other people think of me as a human being, I hope things but I don’t know, if you see what I mean, so it’s really hard to say our music sounds like this because I hear it every single day, and I have done for years. You stop hearing things in the music after a while in the same way you probably don’t think about what your office looks like any more, it’s just there. It’s an impossible question.

You often get called “mysterious”. Would you say that’s fair?

It probably was to begin with. I think we

Four-piece indie outfit Glass Animals create tracks that swarm and writhe with rhythm and ideas. While musically they aren’t all that big on using words, Joe Seaward, drummer of Glass Animals, is wonderfully chatty. He spoke to ELLA WALKER ahead of a sold-out Cambridge Junction date wanted the music to do the talking, we wanted people to judge us on the thing that was important, which was the music we were making and not the people that we were. As the band got bigger and the music got played more, people were obviously interested in that side of things. I care about who the people who make the music I love are, so I think we’ve got less mysterious.

So you don’t mind me asking how you all met then . . .

We all met when we were really small. I was maybe 12 when I first met Ed [Irwin-Singer] and Drew [Macfarlane], and then Dave [Bayley] showed up at our school when we were about 14. We just hung out and just did stuff that kids do. Watch music, listen to music, we went to festivals together and hung out at each other’s houses.

Do you ever get sick of each other?

Occasionally, haha, I have days where I’d rather be doing other things with other people,

“It’s really hard to say our music sounds like this because I hear it every single day, and I have done for years. You stop hearing things in the music after a while in the same way you probably don’t think about what your office looks like any more, it’s just there.”

– Glass Animals drummer Joe Seaward

but I love them all very dearly. They’re my oldest best friends.

What are your thoughts on Cambridge, considering you’re an Oxford band?

Hate it. Absolutely hate it. Can’t stand it! Ha, I’ve only been once weirdly, we played at a ball a couple of years ago. It’s just a slightly smaller, more beautiful version of Oxford as far as I can see.

What are your inspirations?

I could go on for hours, days! I’ll give you one record that changed the way I felt about music which is one by a guy called Tom Veck. His first record [We Have Sound] totally blew my mind when it first came out, I was about 15, and it was just amazing. He made the entire thing by himself in his parents’ garage as far as I can remember, and it’s just amazing, rhythmically and melodically. I’d never really questioned music or thought about it, other than to enjoy it while it was there, and that really changed the way I thought about it which was wicked.

And what are you listening to right now?

There’s a band called Hiatus Kaiyote who are wicked, a jazzy, hip-hop thing from Australia.

It’s the brainchild of this woman, she’s got this totally amazing band, they’re great. There’s this guy called D. D Dumbo who I think is amazing; I’d only heard his EP, but I saw it live and it made it even better – I love it when that happens. There’s Gilligan Moss, a guy in America who did a remix for us and he’s coming on tour with us; he’s freaking cool. I’m looking forward to the Kendrick record. The new D’Angelo record is beautiful and brilliant.

There’s a chunk of stuff!

What was the last gig you went to?

I went to see Caribou in Paris recently. It was in this huge, enormous, massive warehouse and they had a net of balloons in the pitch black and at the very end they dropped thousands of balloons on this crowd that completely lost its mind while the lights were going mental. That was quite an experience.

What’s been the craziest moment so far?

That’s a good question. No TVs out of windows. There was one really cool story actually, we were in LA and went to a music shop to buy some guitar strings or something.

We were standing around, Ed the bass player got bored, wandered off into the bass department of this enormous shop, disappeared down this labyrinth, found himself in the bass department where there was just one other kid, and Ed heard this kid playing something. The kid turned round and thought Ed worked there and said, can you help me with this bass line?

And Ed was like, what are you playing? He said it’s by this band called Glass Animals, it’s a song called Toes, and Ed was like you’re joking and the kid was like no, and Ed said, that’s my bass line! This kid totally lost his s***, and then Ed lost his s***, so they were both in the middle of this labyrinth losing their minds. That was an amazing moment, and I wasn’t even there. And it’s the sort of thing if you’d made it up, people wouldn’t believe. But I didn’t make it up!

If the band hadn’t kicked off, what would you be doing?

I’d probably just hang out with Dave and eat cereal all the time. Dave’s got a bunny rabbit, so I’d probably help look after the bunny and be at a loss. It was a very convenient, brilliant thing to happen to me, because I don’t know what I’d be doing otherwise.