Oxford indie rockers Glass Animals recently released a music video for "Agnes": the final track and fifth single from their Mercury Prize-nominated sophomore album How To Be A Human Being (2016). Lead vocalist David Bayley singled out the significance of the track to : "There are varying degrees of autobiography and my own life in each song I write – but for the most part, that stuff is buried and clouded in fiction or blended with other people’s lives that I’ve heard about in taxis or at parties or on the street. But there is one song that stands apart from the rest. That song is ‘Agnes’. ‘Agnes’ is the one. It’s my favourite song on the record, and the saddest song I will ever write. Probably".
The track's direct and confessional lyricism certainly contrasts with the overt quirkiness of previous singles like "Pork Soda" and "Season 2 Episode 3". The lyrics do not reveal the identity of the song's addressee, but the album includes various characters that correspond to each song - suggesting that Agnes is young male Indian who “probably lives in a loft apartment" and has a passion for photography. Backed by melancholy piano notes, Bayley sketches a poignant narrative that tracks Agnes' downward spiral and death ('This time you pulled the fucking trigger'), footnoted by his abuse of cigarettes, ecstasy, alcohol and pain relievers.
He empathizes with Agnes ('Guess life is long when soaked in sadness/ On borrowed time from Mr. Madness') while reminiscing about his best qualities ('Where went that cheeky friend of mine?/ Where went that billion-dollar smile?'). The song arrives at its chorus at the very end, when Bayley finally shifts the focus to himself and his overwhelming grief: 'You're gone but you're on my mind/ I'm lost but I don't know why'.
The track's accompanying music video fittingly features a close-up on Bayley as he goes through the motions in a human centrifuge, experiencing the heat, weight, and pressure of increased levels of G-force: a potent visualization of the burdens of grief. He vividly described the intensities of the video-making process in a Facebook post (he had to sit through the centrifuge 18 times) before concluding that "it's the only way that we could just about begin to simulate for a moment what happens within Agnes".
