Glass Animals return in triumph tonight to play a hometown show. Tim Hughes spoke to frontman - and qualified neuro-scientist - Dave Bayley

THEY are one of Oxford’s biggest ever musical exports – conquering America and Australia and gracing the bills of the planet’s most famous festivals. But until recently, you could have been forgiven for not having heard of Glass Animals.

Indeed, they laugh about being mobbed in New York, Los Angeles and Sydney, while going unrecognised in their hometown.

No longer though, because this bunch of Jericho lads, who met at St Edward’s School, are well and truly ensconced in the pantheon of local heroes – and tonight (Friday) play a momentous homecoming show at the O2 Academy Oxford.

The relatively intimate show follows huge gigs at the likes of New York’s 3,000-capacity Terminal 5 and LA’s Greek Theatre. And frontman Dave Bayley Dave and bandmates Drew MacFarlane, Edmund Irwin-Singer and Joe Seaward are looking forward to playing to a home crowd.

“We can’t wait to come back and do the O2 Academy,” Dave told me when we chatted. “It was the Zodiac when we were kids, and it is weird being on the same stage we saw so many of my favourite bands like the Arctic Monkeys. It’s going to be amazing.”

The band have previously delighted fans at the Jericho Tavern and the Bullingdon. “I love those little venues where you can see people’s sweat!” says Dave, a sharp neuro-science graduate.

“I like going back to where it all started. These venues don’t feel small though – they feel bigger and more important. It’s tougher playing Oxford than a big stadium in America. They are meaningful gigs before a home crowd where the people are important, and we care what they think.”

By anyone’s standards Glass Animals have had a momentous couple of years.

Their debut album, Zaba, released on Primal Scream and Adele producer Paul Epworth’s Wolf Tone label, sold half a million copies worldwide and amassed 200 million Spotify streams.

When they released their breakthrough single Gooey in 2014, it became the second most shared track on the site, worldwide, for the whole year. They also have 225,000 Facebook likes, 58,000 Instagram followers, and 1.7 million devotees on Shazam.

Their single Toes featured on the soundtrack to the Liam Neeson film Taken 3, and latest single Life Itself, from the new album How to Be a Human Being, has 1.2 million views, was A-listed by Radio 1 and chosen by Annie Mac as her Hottest Record in the World.

That new album sees their soulful melange of pop, trip-hop, dance and gentle electronica bursting out with something sharper and brighter. It is still, as Dave once told us, “hip-hop holding a pineapple” – but that pineapple has grown tough spikes.

“The new album is quite different to the first one,” says Dave. “That was quite shy as we didn’t know what we were doing. It had quite timid lyrics. But we have been playing live every day for two years and have got to appreciate the bolder points of our music and that has influenced the mentality of this record.

“We are comfortable with what we are doing. It is rawer and bolder and we have grown to appreciate the energy of playing live.”

  • Glass Animals play the O2 Academy Oxford tonight. Go to ticketweb.co.uk
  • Album How to Be a Human Being is out now on Wolftone