Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley always keeps Australia close, on his tour list and tattooed on his bum

Diamond-selling UK band Glass Animals have teased an Australian tour to follow their sold-out pop up performance at Liberty Hall tonight.

Dave Bayley of ARIA platinum-selling British band Glass Animals in Sydney ahead of the band’s one-off underplay show. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley is true to his word.

The UK indie darlings — who are on Thursday night previewing their unreleased new album at an intimate and sold-out Sydney gig — have a history with Australia.

“I made a bet with the Australian public that if they voted us to #1 in the charts, I would get a tattoo of the shape of Australia put on my butt,” Bayley told Sydney Confidential.

“Which I actually did.”

The song that made them the first British act to top Triple J’s Hottest 100 in 11 years was Heat Waves.

Dave Bayley of the Glass Animals. Picture: Justin Lloyd

The record-breaking psychedelic pop track went 18x Platinum in Australia, spent seven weeks at the top of the ARIA Singles Chart, and became the biggest international hit from a British band here in almost 30 years.

It’s now feel-good playlist staple, often credited as being a love song.

“A lot of people would have a completely different association with that song, in a romantic kind of way. I left it vague for that reason,” Bayley said.

The top-selling singles of 2021, according to end-of-year chart data published by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) in January 2022, with 'Heat Waves' by Glass Animals in the No.1 spot.

“I wrote it for a friend of mine who passed away. It’s about remembering that person, their birthday’s in June,” he said.

“For me, it has a very different meaning. It’s quite hard to perform live, but I’m starting to see the optimism in it.”

Bayley, who is the band’s songwriter and producer, said the success of Heat Waves “gave [him] confidence,” to get more personal on ‘I Love You So F---king Much’, the band’s fourth studio album due for release on July 19.

Dave Bayley, Drew MacFarlane, Joe Seaward and Edmund Irwin-Singer of Glass Animals. Picture: Cindy Ord/Getty Images.

“It was very intimate, personal song. I didn’t know if people would like it and they did,” he said. “It made me feel it’s okay to write more emotionally.”

Aussie fans at Liberty Hall tonight will be some of the first in the world to hear this new album, but Bayley isn’t promising perfection.

“We’re going to make mistakes playing new stuff live. Because it’s properly live,” he said.

“Most of the shows I’ve seen recently have used backing tracks. These pop up shows are great because everyone wants to be there. We’re really singing and if we f--k it up, we hope you’re supportive enough to let us start over.”

Glass Animals have been touring Australia for the better part of a decade — “We came here before anywhere else in the world,” Bayley noted — promising they’ll return soon for more shows.

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