A Review: Lose Control by Glass Animals ft. Joey Bada$$

This week, Glass Animals dropped new track ‘Lose Control’ featuring Brooklyn-born rapper ‘Joey Bada$$’ (you know somebody is really badass when they replace the ‘s’ in a word with dollar signs). After going musically incognito for a year due to their tour, the release of this song came as a surprise to most Glass Animals fans. With a lame hint being dropped on Facebook on the fifth of this month, showcasing a ‘collab playlist’ between the two artists, there was really no expectations for this release. Glass Animals themselves posted on Facebook after the release that they “ended up working together overnight ‘til [they] had it nearly done”, and that is exactly what it sounds like. “Nearly done”. No expectations entail little enthusiasm over this song, and I am left very disappointed.

After Glass Animals’ sultry album ZABA in 2014, I was expecting a song much of the same calibre. ZABA oozed a ‘Gooey’ ectasy, ‘Hazey’ tribal harmonies and a seductive, hedonistic ambience that is like no other. However, ‘Lose Control’ puts the band back in time, and can only promise a GCSE remix of a relatively poor Animals song. The aggressive rap of Joey ‘fuck[ing] with the bad man’ about a ‘big fat chocolate bar that’s on the law’ really jars with what fans expect from Glass Animals. It seems like the band try and redeem the song by featuring their iconic harmonies towards the end, yet this is also a lost cause. Their portion of the song is basically a middle finger up to life, which is so far away from their usual psychedelic lyrics that it’s almost laughable. (I yearn to hear their narcotised lyrics once more). The song tends to grate more every time I hear it, and I just feel like it’s a failed attempt in appealing to the other ‘cool’ side of music: the hip hop/grime scene. It makes me dread the release of their next album.

A song for people who… want to drop it like it’s lukewarm in Dalston on a Thursday night.