Get Out: Glass Animals are heading on tour and out of this world

Leave the house? Seems quite likely with all of this going on.

GIG OF THE WEEK

Glass Animals

Glass Animals are about to launch their latest intergalactic spectacle, the Tour of Earth – a name that lands somewhere between cosmic irony and emotional truth-telling. Starting at Dublin’s 3Arena on 30th October and closing at London’s O2 on 7th November, it’s a six-date journey through the UK and Ireland that promises to transform arenas into spaceships, all powered by their latest album ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’. If that title sounds disarmingly direct for a band who once wrapped their emotions in pineapples and psychedelic metaphors, well, that’s entirely the point.

The world’s shifted quite dramatically since frontman Dave Bayley plotted Glass Animals’ course towards worldwide superstardom. ‘Heat Waves’ – that sleeper hit turned global phenomenon – transformed them from indie darlings into proper pop contenders, the kind who get Grammy nominations and billions of streams. It’s the sort of success story that reads like a fairy tale, until you hear about Bayley watching the Grammy ceremony (where they were up for Best New Artist) from a quarantine hotel room in Las Vegas, or their lighting engineer running shows from a van outside venues after testing positive for COVID. Even their victories came with a side order of surreal.

Post-Dreamland tour, Bayley did what any sensible person might do when faced with sudden stratospheric success – he went away to think about it. Producing for others (including the small matter of working with Florence Welch) provided a creative buffer zone, but eventually, the gravitational pull of his own songwriting proved too strong to resist. He retreated to California, armed with vintage synths and an overwhelming sense that success doesn’t necessarily bring clarity. “It was either give in to the darkness or reach out and grab something,” he says of this period – a statement that could double as this album’s mission statement.

What emerged is a record that sounds like a love letter written from a space station – intimate thoughts broadcast across an infinite void. Bayley’s always harboured dreams of making a “space record,” and ‘I Love You So F*ing Much’ delivers on that ambition while keeping its feet just firmly enough on Earth to remember what matters. Tracks like ‘Creatures in Heaven’ and ‘A Tear in Space (Airlock)’ might sound like lost cuts from a particularly emotional sci-fi soundtrack, but they’re grounded in very human concerns: connection, isolation, and the way those two states seem to orbit each other endlessly.

The vulnerability is striking. These songs weren’t written for public consumption – they were Bayley’s personal transmissions from his own emotional wilderness. Sharing them, he admits, feels like “stepping out naked” into the world. Each track was chosen with the precision of a space mission checklist, ensuring no emotional territory gets covered twice. Because if there’s one thing Bayley’s learned through all this, it’s that he’s “a sucker for a song that makes you feel something.”

They’re bringing The Big Moon along for the ride – a pairing that makes perfect sense for a tour that promises to balance indie intimacy with interstellar ambition. From Dublin to London, the Tour of Earth sees Glass Animals moving beyond the dizzying heights of ‘Dreamland’ to explore something more celestial. They’re no longer the band that accidentally conquered the charts. They’re evolving into something more interesting: a group willing to strip away the metaphors and plant their flag in raw emotional territory.

3Arena, Dublin (30 Oct), OVO Hydro, Glasgow (1 Nov), Co-op Live, Manchester (2), Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham (3), Utilita Arena Cardiff, Cardiff (5), The O2, London (7).