Bastille
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Bastille

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“They had an exhibition that apparently they’d been getting together for years, about Pompeii and Herculaneum,” singer Dan Smith explains. “Our single Pompeii had come out just as the exhibition was about to open, and out of the blue, I got a call from the museum asking if we’d come along and play. They felt like it was a wonderful coincidence, really serendipitous, and that we should mark the occasion somehow.”

The chaps from Bastille were invited to come and see the exhibition before it opened to the public – an amazing experience, Smith says. “We felt very privileged to do that, and the exhibition was really fascinating, even if we were a bit nervous,” he tells me with a laugh. “The people who put the exhibition together really liked the song, and they were really keen to have us perform it there. They showed us to the reading room, which is a huge, cavernous space, and told us that we would be the first band ever to perform there. They really wanted it to happen, they were really excited, but I was a little bit reluctant, mainly because the idea of performing in the British Museum was a bit scary and a bit overwhelming.”

A museum is a place of hush and quiet and reverence, after all. “Our drummer Woody said that it felt wildly inappropriate for us to be there,” Smith explains, “but one of the women who was there setting up the exhibition heard him say that and she really liked it. She said that there’s a perception that history museums should be quiet and hushed, but actually the people of Pompeii were wild and inappropriate people, so it was totally right for us to be there.” Finally convinced, the band agreed to give it a shot. “We started the song, and the second I opened my mouth to sing, there was huge reverb all around the room,” Smith says. “It sounded massive and epic. I had been mildly dreading it, but it sounded so good that we all got comfortable really quickly.”

Bastille’s music is lush and multi-layered, but the stripped-back arrangement of Pompeii they performed that day turned out to be a big hit. I ask Smith if they’d consider doing this with more of their songs, but he says he’s unsure. “The song writing and the production come at the same time for us, so we love to perform them as written, but it’s quite nice to mess with them from time to time,” he says. “We’re going to Cambridge soon to play at a ball,” he continues, “and the organisers have arranged for the choir and orchestra to play with us for the gig. We’re planning to do a version of Things We Lost In The Fire with piano, choir and orchestra, so when we get there, we’ll hopefully have the time to nip into the chapel and rehearse that with them for a few hours.”

In addition to a penchant for history, Dan Smith is a life-long cinema buff. The first ever Bastille video was not, in fact, a video of the band at all – it was a collection of clips that Smith edited together from Terrence Malick’s classic 1973 film, Badlands. “We wanted a level of anonymity at the beginning,” he explains. “We wanted to put a song out without really having to put ourselves out there. We thought it would be interesting to re-edit the movie as a music video.” Similarly, as a struggling young band with no money to spend on clips, re-editing Malick’s film was a more attractive option. “We didn’t really anticipate that we’d get to the level where it would draw a lot of attention, and we’d eventually have to take it down,” Smith laughs. “It’s funny the number of people that thought I was Martin Sheen. There were a lot of people who were really annoyed at me for kicking the cow, which he does in the movie.”
Bastille will soon make their way to Australia, but as for what the future holds after that, Smith is unsure. “We have a lot of festivals in the UK and Europe over the summer,” he says, “when we’re releasing the album in America and coming to you and Japan. We’re very fortunate to be able to spend the rest of the year touring the world. Beyond that, hopefully we’ll be able to do a second album. We’ll take it from there and see what happens.”

BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN