A breathtaking anthem about infatuation’s intensity, our own insignificance, and more, Glass Animals’ irresistibly catchy “A Tear in Space (Airlock)” is a groovy, hypnotic, and deeply provocative fever dream – a pressure cooker of intense emotion and sound.
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“A Tear in Space (Airlock)” – Glass Animals
Glass Animals’ latest single is all-consuming, just like its subject matter.
A song about infatuation’s intensity – and the ways in which something that seems so big to us can simultaneously be so small when we zoom out – “A Tear in Space (Airlock)” is a groovy, hypnotic, and deeply provocative fever dream. Following April’s “Creatures in Heaven,” the second tease off the band’s forthcoming fourth LP I Love You So F***ing Much (out July 19 via Republic Records) is a pressure cooker of intense emotion and sound.
“Love, do you want love? Do you want lust? Say you don’t know, maybe you just like the control, like it all cold, but I like ya, like ya like you’re drugs,” Dave Bayley sings at the start over gently beating synth chords – a reminder of our own heartbeats. His lyrics paint a vivid portrait of desire, to the point of toxicity: “Sit in my blood, maybe too much, never enough, I am your dog, I’m on your floor, all that you want, but I like ya, like ya like you’re (drugs).”
It’s a bold way to begin any conversation, and the passion only builds as Bayley and band members Joe Seaward, Drew MacFarlane, and Edmund Irwin-Singer rise to a cathartic, churning crescendo. It’s a heated, heavy climax – one that aches with the raw weight of unrequited love even as Bayley acknowledges the relative meaninglessness of a tiny teardrop in an airlock, compared to the vast galaxy:
You get all worked up
Loving you, but it’s not enough
Loving you from the airlock of
Your heart, from airlock one
Fear pulls you from my arms
It’s a reckless abandon
One look and it’s all gone
All the air from the bottom of my lungs
Water, running down my face
Water, running different ways
Water, like a billion waves
Water, just a tear in space
Water, running down my face
Water, running different ways
Water, like a billion waves
Water, just a tear in space
“‘A Tear In Space (Airlock)’ explores a love that is all-consuming, forcing you to bend and stretch yourself around the other person to the point where you lose yourself, stretched so thin, squashed so small, you are almost invisible,” Bayley explains.
“It is about control and dominance and the pleasure/pain of abandoning yourself to someone else’s desires. It also touches on the wider themes of scale and perspective that the album plays with — after all, what is a tear in space? So small that it is insignificant, and yet so vast to the person shedding it.”
Ooh, too late, my love
You blew me into star dust
Ooh, but I made it, just
Dangling like a thread from you
I climb into your walls
I’m where the spiders go
I’m here, but you aren’t sure
What are you waiting for?
Stretch me like leather rope
Make me invisible
Shape me into your form
What are you waiting for?
Glass Animals hold nothing back as they unpack passion’s raw guts, basking in bold, thick sounds that evoke the fire we’ve all felt in our hearts.
“A Tear In Space (Airlock)” is dramatic, immersive, and unrelenting; a pop song with an insatiable beat, just like their chart-topping, record-breaking “Heat Waves,” and yet one that, like so much of Glass Animals’ music, forces its audience to contemplate identity with fresh perspective.
We are so big, and yet so small, and in three and a half minutes, the British band capture both sides of that philosophical coin in a song that demands not only our undivided attention, but also our unrelenting movement.
Dance your heart out to your own inferiority, courtesy of Glass Animals!
Hostage, so in love
It’s an airless black-chasm
You turn the airlock on
You turn the airlock on
Object disappearance
It’s a true phenomenon
Forget me and I’m gone
I’m slipping, no-no-no-no-no
Water, running down my face
Water, running different ways
Water, like a billion waves
Water, just a tear in space
Water, running down my face
Water, running different ways
Water, like a billion waves
Water, just a tear in space
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“A Tear in Space (Airlock)” – Glass Animals
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© Drewby Perez
© Drewby Perez
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