I Love You So F***ing Much.

Glass Animals’ 2020 album, Dreamland, and its global sleeper hit, “Heat Waves”, gave the group a level of chart-topping, multi-platinum success most bands can’t even imagine. Yet, having put the record out during the pandemic, that newfound status only served to heighten feelings of alienation for band-leader Dave Bayley. “It was this amazing thing that we never expected, but we couldn’t be part of it,” he says. “It didn’t feel real, so there was this huge sense of detachment. It started this existential crisis.”
Touring the record under strict COVID protocols didn’t help matters, and when the band came off tour, Bayley was struck down with the virus and forced to self-isolate. Alone in a rented house in the LA hills as storms raged across California, however, Bayley looked down on the twinkling lights of Los Angeles and the eureka moment that sparked I Love You so F***ing Much came to him.
“I’d tried to make a space record before but it came out too cold. It didn’t feel human or relatable enough,” he says of his plan to make a grand, sci-fi-sounding album. “Being in that house literally put it in perspective. I looked out and saw all these people walking around, the families and people in the gas stations having an argument. You see these human relationships and how complex and important they are and you realise how powerful those human interactions we have are. Those relationships and those feelings are much bigger than everything else. The little things right in front of you are actually more important.”
The result is a record that combines the epic scope of Bayley’s sci-fi production visions with some of his most personal songwriting to date. From opener “Show Pony”’s solar-flare reflections on love, through the futuristic claustrophobia of “A Tear in Space (Airlock)” to the gentle landing of final track, “Lost in the Ocean”, I Love You so F***ing Much deftly encapsulates the human condition and our place in the universe.