#album: how to be a human being

[glittergroovy]

Season 2 Episode 3 • Glass Animals

[laromp3]

Pork Soda - Glass Animals

[recordshop-archive]

[DIVIDER ID: A pattern of pastel shells: a purple star, a blue scallop, and a pink conch shell. Each of them is surrounded by sparkles. End ID]

[FLAG ID: A flag with 5 horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, they are dull red, medium violet red, dusty rose, old pink, and mercury. End ID]

[PT: Porksodaica: A musicagender related to, connected to and/or described by the song Pork Soda by Glass Animals. End PT]

[PT: Coined by me! Requested by Anon! End ID]

[DNI ID: An image of blue pool water. Scratchy white text with a black outline reads “Read DNI before interacting!!! End ID]

do you know of a pork soda by glass animals musicagender?

I don’t know so I coined one!

Porksodaica: A musicagender related to, connected to and/or described by the song Pork Soda by Glass Animals.

Coined by me! Requested by Anon!

[reunitedinterlude]

lofi phantasy: the album

track 20: box boys

[otiksimr]

I love my son.

[featherdawn]

music taste but its in an alignment chart i found

[saltyb0ba]

a deep blood moon, a starless night

dark enough to see the light

[callmecastiel]

Maybe it's just me or something, but so many people commenting on Glass Animals' new songs stuff like "this is just basic pop music" or "I wish they'd go back to Zaba" kinda pisses me off? Like are you fans of GA or are you just fans of Zaba?

And this is coming from me. My favorite album IS Zaba. My favorite song of all time from GA is Walla Walla. And I understand being upset that the album is just, quote, 'Dreamland 2.0' but at the same time it's kind of shitty to be like "grrr go back to what you did before" when GA has been evolving in a way that I find really interesting. Like listening to the songs in ILYSFM they HAVE musical motifs from previous albums (my friend and I noticed a lot from HTBAHB and Dreamland) that have continued through their albums and I think that's really cool!

Like idk maybe I'm upset for a dumb reason but I've been a fan since Zaba first came out when I was 10 and listening to it with my aunt. And I get where people are coming from and how upset they are, it's just really disheartening to hear and see fans saying "oh I don't like this they fell off" when I think it's interesting. Especially because the songs in ILYSFM, to me at the very least, sound like a culmination of all their previous albums together. It sounds like a mix between HTBAHB and Dreamland and I think it's cool! I know it's not everyones thing, and I understand that, but everyone just seems so aggressive about it.

[glass-beasts]

ILYSFM ALBUM MELODY ANALYSIS!

SHOW PONY

Similar: Creatures In Heaven, Helium, It’s All So Incredibly Loud

Mood: wistful, healed hurt, reminiscent, piteous

WHATTHEHELLISHAPPENING?

Similar: I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)

Mood: satisfaction, bitter joy, relief, overwhelmingly exhausting contentment, careful carelessness

CREATURES IN HEAVEN

Similar: Helium, Agnes

Mood: cumbersome love, finality, unclouded closure, acceptance of regret, nostalgia, state of missing

WONDERFUL NOTHING

Similar: Mama’s Gun, Flip, Toes, Space Ghost Coast To Coast

Mood: lusty vengeance, satisfying hate, moth-to-a-flame mindset, anger-less despise

A TEAR IN SPACE (AIRLOCK)

Similar: Mama’s Gun, Domestic Bliss

Mood: obsession, depressive love, desperation, mercurial passion, capricious feelings

I CAN’T MAKE YOU FALL IN LOVE AGAIN

Similar: It’s All So Incredibly Loud, Helium, Melon and The Coconut

Mood: deep-seated miss, nostalgia, hopelessness, wishing, broken-hearted, knowingly contradictory desires

HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THE BOMB

Similar: Heat Waves, A Tear In Space, Youth

Mood: unintentionally intentional distancing, passive frustration, dissuasion

WHITE ROSES

Similar: Space Ghost Coast To Coast, Poplar Street (lyric-wise), I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Talk), Show Pony

Mood: dark path towards light at the end of the tunnel, de-villainization, dying desire, lonesomeness, selfless reminiscing

ON THE RUN

Similar: Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth, Tangerine

Mood: light humor, self-scapegoating, decided closure, hopefulness, yearning, blind belief, self-loss

LOST IN THE OCEAN

Similar: Mama’s Gun, Hazey, Dreamland, Hot Sugar

Mood: exhaustion, passiveness, relaxation, carelessness, agape (Greek love type)

OVERALL ALBUM MOOD:

Oxymoronic, loving, grieving, preciousness

[rebornrosess]

how to be a human being by glass animals is so insane like imagine just making up 11 original characters, each with detailed backstories and interests and personalities, all based on people you’ve actually met around the world combined with your own experiences, then actually casting models to pose as those characters you have created and reenact the stories you’ve written to connect in an overarching narrative narrated by more than 11 characters in a world that has a uniquely defined aesthetic and lore illustrated on the tumblr page dedicated to it. also the album cover has like four variants and its trim is an actual collage made of tiny squares with some relating to symbols from certain songs. also there’s an interlude cut from a 7 minute long rant about capitalism because why not. also agnes is an endless loop on vinyl to remind you life continues after death because at the end of the day we are all made up of the sum of our experiences and how we define those experiences, and we exist in everyone and everything around us for better and for worse but that is the human experience and it is a scary but universal thing. i need to put glass animals in a petrie dish and study them under a microscope.

[glittergroovy]

Season 2 Episode 3 • Glass Animals

[pyr0cue]

And yeah no one will ever really get it but those who get it. I’ll never be able to explain how it felt for the impossible to come true when mcr announced that they were reuniting and how much that changed my worldview. No one will ever get exactly how I felt at 12 and at my lowest point and getting one thing to live for in a way everyone said would never ever happen. Like haha yeah this band is an idea but I’m dead serious. This band is an idea and it’s a message that has shaped me for a long time in a way that is deeply embarrassing and extremely liberating and yeah. My chemical romance forever

[whiskeyswifty]

in defense of 1989:

the breathless, wailing anguish with which she howls "take me HOOOOOoooooome" as she finally gives in to her vices, her weaknesses, knowingly but willingly. because she's so tired of doing the right thing, the smart thing, so lonely, so hopeful, and soooo horny she's helpless against self destruction. A song so unflinching in its awareness of that while also unapologetic in her choice to fully throw herself into temptation.

and even still the continued breathless, endless questioning in out of the woods. is this it? is it finally over? when it be over? when will someone just love her, and when will she stop doubting that they don't? when will this cycle of searching and heartbreak end? the way the song ends, so desperate is she for guidance that her voices harmonize together in a nearly religious choir, calling to the heavens for an answer. utterly lost, screaming into the forest doubting everything she remembers, was it real? can she even remember herself?

In I wish you would, how she turns a quiet, fleeting moment of laying in bed, watching headlights crawl across her bedroom wall though the gap in her curtains into a bombastic tour through all the regrets and dashed hopes that fly through her head. how you can mentally run through the span of fifty emotions over the course of ten seconds.

wildest dreams where the song is paced using her own heartbeat i mean what a clever way to quite literally let you into her heart

also in wildest dreams, giving into the idea that maybe this is what she deserves maybe, all she deserves. it's all she'll ever be, just a memory to someone and so in that fatalist acceptance, she's determined to at least make sure she's a phenomenal memory. and she asks them to lie to her, just this once. she doesn't ask for anything else, just to be told one time that she's worth remembering. an incredibly vulnerable thing to admit about how you see yourself and how dark of a place to be mentally.

the murky, wobbly synth and wistful whispery voices on this love. the whole song sounding like a fog or like wading in the tide as it ebbs and flows. so tactile in how it renders the feeling of wading through the fog a breakup or dissolution. not sure what the right thing to do is, to turn around and fight for them, to let them go, to move on. a song where she's so lost, she surrenders her fate completely and accepts whatever happens will happen and completely succumbs to the current, wherever it takes her and whatever it brings. she has to believe they'll come back on their own because there's nothing else to do now. she's done everything she could and it's just up to the tides of fate.

i mean clean?? hello??? one of the most apt metaphors for breaking up with someone when the relationship was intense and maybe codependent or manipulative. how addiction can be a person, and all the same trappings apply. how the whole album was her struggling through that. revisiting it over and over, how hard it is to try to live without them, as if it feels like drowning. but ultimately finding a baptism of self in the drowning, being the one to save herself for the first time, realizing she could save herself. revolutionary idea for the person who wrote all 4 prior albums, a monumental moment of growth. while still acknowledging that the itch to return to them will always linger, but recognizing that that's not love or fate or destiny like she once thought it was. it's just her insecurities trying to drag her back into bad habits, ultimately pulling the monster out from under the bed and in the harsh light of day, seeing it for what it is and rendering it unable to fool her anymore. one of the most pivotal moments in her mental and emotional growth as a person that she's ever discussed in her art. Where she completely abandons the fairytale idea of fate and destiny and begins to embrace her autonomy.

bonus of YAIL being one of the quietest, most intimate and mundane stories of love she’s ever written. how poignant for it to come after the bombastic pop and clashing synths of the sweeping and tragic romances regaled on the entire album. as if to say nah, real love, true love is in the quiet, unremarkable moments. the synths and echoes used again here but in a more dreamy, ethereal way, as if it's not happening quite yet but it's a wish for something totally different than she had before, something she should have wished for all along. a beautiful contrast!!

also just i'm sorry but blank space was so clever, maybe you had to be there but for her to come out with this song after the Red era and just.... absolutely destroy the pervading narrative about her with a sledgehammer but in the most tongue and cheek way, the most above it all way. like look how stupid you sound? this is the person you think i am? do you hear how ridiculous this shit is? get a grip! she not only made them into the fool and came off smarter and savvier than anyone else, she made BANK off of their stupidity. slay of the century!!!

basically 1989 is the rawest and most honest depiction of a woman in her 20s at some of the lowest points your 20s can bring. how through that time, as you figure out who you're supposed to be as an adult, you completely lose sight of who you are, and because of that you feel the lowest about yourself you may ever feel in your life. You let yourself get treated horribly and you begin to wonder if this is all there is. and it's awful and it feels endless and so lonely because you feel like the only person going through it, that everyone else knows something you don't, and that you're pathetic and worthless for falling so behind everyone else. but at the same time your 20s are soooooo fun and exciting and liberating because of your first foray into independent adulthood, so to lay unapologetically pop instrumentals over these crushing feelings is genius. it's the whiplash of that time in your life, the oscillation making each feeling of euphoria and devastation that much more potent. And how she emotes on this album is unlike anything else! She’s theatrical with her syllables and delivery as if she might never get the chance to say any of this again!

but also, the perhaps unconscious metaphor she presented that so many people, fans included, seem to fall victim to. the idea that oh, it's just pop music, it's not that deep, it's soulless and vapid. only serious music can actually be emotional, when the words she's saying and the hard truths about herself she's conveying are raw and bleeding open wounds. repetition isn't laziness, but a manifestation of anxiety and building tension. heavy synths and electro-pop stylings aren't soulless compared to guitars, but a way to unground you from reality and give you that atmosphere of disorientation and so as she grapples with losing her bearings, so do you. it's a musical allegory for how in your twenties someone can outwardly be having the time of their life, but inwardly be the lowest they've ever been. it's the eternal duality of your 20s, rendered so beautifully and harnessing musical stylings so masterfully to convey this experience. i'll defend it forever for that reason and implore people to reexamine their view of pop music and pop instrumental compositions as less artistic achievements and less emotional than acoustic ballads. sadness isn't the only vulnerable emotion. confusion, anger, anxiety, frustration are all profound and loud emotions that deserve an electric guitar because sometimes words aren't enough for how much you're feeling, and it's up to a cacophonous soundscape of electric guitars and moog synthesizers and your own cathartic screams to fill in the rest.

[one-shitpost-a-day]

don'tcha think it's real neat how htbahb and ilysfm are both about humanity i just think that's real neat

actually all of glass animals' albums kinda have this sort of underlying idea that there will be humanity in everything and anything you do

like with zaba its whole thing was wildness, and the unknown, and disorder — yet, within that disorder, order was found: the familiarity of familiarity. in setting us to the metaphors spoken of animals, those strange and unknown beings, we found kin. we saw each other and ourselves in those trivial stories of raw ecology. in the hidden happenings of the jungle.

and in htbahb, it was a bit more obvious than that, but it was also much more tender, more open. it had a prominent sense of family and commonality instead of the harsher realities of intraspecific competition and a need for protection that comes with living. how to be a human being taught us how to look out for one another, showed us what we were capable of, explained what life is like.

dreamland has been the most personal and most clear yet. even through that haze of uncertainty which follows all people on Earth, many things find their way through. they shine with the knowledge that dave has to offer. every song on dreamland showcases a little bit more of his experiences and through them we may yet understand what it is like to be.

after introducing us to the concept of life, telling us what it's like, then allowing us to experience it, glass animals has now let us look at it from the outside. ilysfm is kinda like a little bookshelf of stories, and each one presents itself uniquely and gorgeously. it lets us learn from experiences that have already been had. it showcases what humans can be like through the lens of anything but. its otherworldly lyrical implications are strange, yet familiar to us, somehow, because things like love are universal.

IT'S SO GOOD AUGH I'M SO HAPPY!!! (thiiis isss just where i wanna beee)

[vinylfoxbooks]

What if I wrote a whole series of oneshots where each one focuses on one marauders Era person and one song from Glass Animals' 'How To Be A Human Being Album'?

Im getting ideas

Like what if I just did a whole universe where their three most recent albums (I Love You So F***ing Much, Dreamland, and How to Be A Human Being bc all of those songs have lyrics unlike ZABA and the Glass Animals album) focuses in each different group (marauders, valkyries, and skittles)

[amimuu]

My brain: "You can't listen to a single album all day long" Me: SAYS WHO. SAYS WHO.