Glass Animals - Zaba

We hadn’t put Adele/Florence producer Paul Epworth down as a ‘Men Behind The Wire’ type but that’s the thought that springs to mind when you discover he has decided to call his new record label ‘Wolf Tone’.
Of course it is possible he was entirely unaware of the Continuity IRA’s favorite trad group. Still, if he was articulating a deep-rooted passion for traditional musicians with a strong opinion on the ‘national question’, you wouldn’t know it from his first signing, Oxford’s Glass Animals (their debut is released in conjunction with Universe affiliate Caroline): it is hard to imagine a group less likely to participate in a tankard-clinking knees-up.
Part of an upswell of what we are going to have to start calling ‘post-Alt J’ bands, the quartet are sensitive, soft-spoken and with a flair for splicing supposedly incompatible genres: indie, r ‘n’ b, rock, hip hop etc. On their debut album they jump off the art-rock deep end and splash around with aplomb. They sound a bit Radiohead on skittering opener ‘Flip’ and come on like a grooved-up latter-day Pink Floyd with ‘Black Mambo’ and ‘Gooey’.
Zaba is agreeably pretentious: the group claim to be equal parts inspired by ‘Kanye West and Charles Darwin’, and by ‘journey into darkness’ narratives such as Apocalypse Now and The Island of Dr Moreau. Granted, their music is more heart of the student disco than anything else, but it is nonetheless deeply encouraging to come upon young men prepared to look silly in the name of art.

Out now.