Glass Animals’ performance at the Orpheum Tuesday night had everyone in attendance thankful for the difficulty of medical school. Lead vocalist Dave Bayley, the brains behind their psychedelic indie sounds meshing with soul and R&B, was, incidentally, once upon a time a student in medical school. Lucky for us, he soon realized his calling lay in creating music that attracts one of the most eclectic music crowds I’ve ever seen in Madison. Perhaps one reason perhaps why this concert brought together fans of such different genres is the addictive quality of Bayley’s music. Anyone who has ever experienced the first slow wave of getting tipsy or high would have been able to recognize that same feeling when Bayley launched into their first number, “Walla Walla,” and the wave climbed from there.
My crazed love for concerts that make every bone in my body fluid and inspire movement is no secret by now, and expectations ran rampantly high for Glass Animals to have me moving nonstop all night. They say you should go into everything with your expectations set below par, so anything that you experience can only be good. They clearly underestimate the genius of the lyrical zoo Glass Animals creates. They not only spin and weave music that makes you lose yourself, they create an experience. Lit with purple and blue lights, amidst the aura of smoke, jungle and palm trees, it felt like the tribal gathering of sound and movement, with Bayley guiding the movement of our bodies with his every word.
Although the lyrics of the British vocalist aren’t always decipherable, cloaked heavily with the trimmings of synthesized guitar, they carry within them a wealth of meaning and depth that is usually missing in most music from the same genre. For most trippy electronica, the point is to provoke bobbing heads. For Bayley, he wants to poke at our minds as well as “pump our veins with gushing gnomes.”
The quartet excels at knowing how to pay homage to those who inspire their own sound as well, creating havoc with the covers of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Gold Lion,” and Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown” as one of their last encore songs. With only one full-length album as their weapon of choice, the show could not have possibly lasted more than the 70 minutes it did, much to everyone’s dismay. Ending the show with “Pools,” justice was done to its infectious lyrics of smiling.
Bayley and his troupe, Drew MacFarlane (guitar and keyboard), Edmund Irwin-Singer (bass and keyboard) and Joe Seaward (drums), did what very few performers can actually achieve. They created an atmosphere that had everyone present in the venue feel like a part of their forest, feeling their liquid vibes in every sway and touch of the crowd. Not shy to dance himself all over the stage, and exhibit the same high he was experiencing, Bayley fearlessly braved the masses and dove in to croon and swim between the ones he had gathered. My favorite moment though was being surprised by “Gooey,” smack-dab in the middle of the set list, and how it seemed to breathe reckless abandon into everyone. While all of Madison was caught in the drudgery of yet another banal Tuesday last night, and the mounting stress of midterms, for some it was a musical nirvana of movement and joy. Glass Animals were experienced thoroughly, and so were their peanut butter vibes.
