NEW YORK (AP) – Hospitals aren’t usually incubators of great music, but in the case of English indie-pop band Glass Animals, one member’s medical emergency led to a breakout album and a Grammy nomination.
Drummer Joe Seaward was struck by a truck in 2018 while riding his bike in Dublin, leaving him fighting for his life. Dave Bayley, the quartet’s songwriter, singer and producer, spent long hours next to his friend in the hospital, the future uncertain under the harsh florescent lights.
“Hospitals are weird places, and I think because of that, they make you feel very nostalgic. You’re looking for comfort in the past. So that was the kind of beginnings of the album,” Bayley says. “I started writing down these memories and searching for more memories, and some of them were great. Some of them are really uncomfortable.”
The album that emerged was the deeply personal “Dreamland,” rooted in Bailey’s past. There are playfully references to Scooby-Doo, Fruit Loops, Pepsi Blue and Mr. Miyagi, but also a song about domestic abuse (“Domestic Bliss”) and a tune about an old friend who planned but never pulled off a school shooting (“Space Ghost Coast to Coast”).
The standout single is “Heat Waves,” a hypnotic, hazy tune that honors a departed friend whose birthday brings grief each passing June. It was a slow-moving hit, reaching the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 after 42 weeks on the chart, the longest climb to the top 10 in U.S. chart history. The song has earned over 1 billion streams on Spotify, landing it in the company of “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and “Dynamite” by BTS.