How to be a Human Being by Glass Animals

Review written by Savanah Reed

While growing up I always listened to a lot of different types of music, and I became very interested in animated trends on Youtube while I was in middle school. It was there I would discover a band that would change my music taste entirely. The alternative indie band Glass Animals’ album, How to be a Human Being, released in 2016. Their song “Pork Soda” was featured in a YouTube trend for animators. The song is undoubtedly one of the more popular and listened to on the album (other songs like “The Other Side of Paradise,” “Take A Slice,” and “Youth” reach hundreds of millions of listens on streaming services). Although I remember only listening to a select few from the album for a while, it didn’t take me long to end up listening to the rest of the album and quickly falling in love with it.

I’ve always been a fan of music that includes a wide variety of drums, instruments, and random noises, and Glass Animals really do succeed in all of those. All songs on the album feature a different story for each song, and although I was not aware of this until recently, I think it’s an interesting touch, since the song lyrics are a bit all over the place and can be confusing. Of course, what stands out to me the most are the sounds in the songs. The album experiments with synths, spring reverbs, phasing effects, and general mouth sound, as well as a plastic toy sonic ray gun that is apparently used on some tracks; this is also featured in the first song’s lyrics: “Thought that I was / Northern Camden’s own Flash Gordon / Sonic ray gun, gonna be a super star.” Glass Animals also uses lots of homemade drum samples, wah-wah pedal effects, and different people and microphones with effects throughout the songs to create different vocal stacks.

Something that Glass Animals does very well is immersing the listener into their songs. Beat drops, sound effects, and everything else I just mentioned above is used to its full extent. Many of the lyrics also reflect what is happening in the song. The song “Season 2 Episode 3” does a great job at this. Many interpretations of the song follow someone who is falling in love with a girl who’s depressed and self medicates by getting high all the time: “Leftover breakfast, cereal for lunch / She’s broken but she’s fun / My girl eats mayonnaise from a jar while she’s getting blazed.” The lyrics go on and on, but you get the point. The music and video game sound effects bring the song together as well, and of course the music videos hit right on the nose of what they’re trying to convey. Most if not all of the songs fit together perfectly in the album with all of their psychedelic effects and random noises. These are clearly the things that really end up drawing me into their music.

My favorite song in the album is most likely the first song, “Life Itself.” The song starts off with some effects that sound like you’re entering a fairy tale, and then slowly fading out, but only a second later loud drums are heard. Throughout the song there are effects upon effects. This includes guitars, keyboards, drums, and noises from miscellaneous objects or just sounds you can simply make with your mouth. The song features the story of “a guy that was born a bit strange and struggles to become part of society.” Because of this he ends up spending more and more time in his own head, which makes him stranger and “becomes an awful cycle of doom.” As mentioned before, I wasn’t aware of the stories being told in this album, but they’re interesting nonetheless. When listening to music I am usually more attracted to the way the song sounds and focus less on the lyrics and what they could mean (this isn’t the case for all songs but for music like this it is).

Glass Animals also creates alternate versions to some of their popular songs which they label as “stripped back” versions. These versions are simply the same song but reduced to its simplest and essential form. Although How To Be A Human Being does not include songs like this, they have multiple songs on their albums Dreamland and ZABA that do. A favorite of mine is the song “Your Love (Deja Vu) – Stripped Back” from the Dreamland album, which takes the original chorus of the song and slows it down to only include light drums and the lyrics as well as other (but very limited) noises and instruments.

I can’t list off a lot (if any) of albums that I can listen to start to finish without stopping, but How To Be A Human Being is an exception. While I grew up listening to them, they encouraged me to branch out when listening to more psychedelic and experimental music. Their albums Leaflings, ZABA and Dreamland all feature similar effects and draw me in, and I can listen to most if not all of the songs in those albums as well! Their music was able to introduce me to many other alternative bands.