Since storming onto the British music scene in 2013 with their debut album Bad Blood, everyone’s favourite pop-rock band Bastille have won the adoration of millions across the globe. Their plethora of hits, from Pompeii to Of The Night, have become festival anthems in their own right, with catchy choruses and sleek hooks aplenty.
Following the unexpected release of candid new track, survivin’, The EDIT speaks to bassist Will Farquarson as we chat the success of the band’s latest singles, the impact of the current pandemic, and his hopes for the future.
It’s been a couple of weeks since your latest single ‘survivin’’ was released – how’s the reaction been so far?
It’s been really good! What’s so strange this time around is obviously this unprecedented situation in which we find ourselves. There’s a real detachment. We’re getting a lot of these reports from our record label about how it’s doing on radio and we hear figures from streaming, and it’s kind of odd. Normally when you release a record, you go and promote it, do meet and greets, speak to fans and go into studios. Often – this last while – we’ve been on tour, so you get very visceral and immediate feedback from the audiences every night.
It’s doing, apparently, really well but it’s very strange because most of my time at the moment is spent watching Gardener’s World with my lovely fiancée, occasionally looking at my phone and being e-mailed “oh, by the way, your single got played on this show or that show” and it’s wonderful that these things are going swimmingly, but it’s really bizarre how detached we feel from it this time around.
I read that this song was actually written before COVID-19 reared its head. The honesty and directness of the lyrics are surprisingly relevant to the current situation we’re all facing – but for our readers who haven’t yet heard it, what was the song originally written about?
It’s interesting because we sort of had this discussion and Dan (Smith) wrote it broadly about feeling stressed, anxious, having a lack of confidence and things like that. Not to sound too pretentious, but sort of a reflection on the struggles of the human condition, I guess. We have this a lot, but it’s almost as if the original intention is kind of irrelevant really. If you listen and it helps you deal with what’s going on at the minute, then that’s what the song is about.
I think when you write and create art – particularly for public consumption – once it’s out there, it becomes public property. Just ‘cause Dan wrote the song and I’m in the band, who are we to say to someone “it doesn’t mean that, it means this”. Philosophically, I guess the intention perhaps isn’t as important as people think it is because art belongs to culture. It is kind of remarkable that this song was written about something else but fits the situation perfectly – but, you know, sometimes these things happen in life!
I think you were a bit ahead of yourselves last year when you released your third studio album Doom Days with its apocalyptic sound. How do you think the experience of lockdown will play a part in the band’s next era?
Logistically, it’s obviously changed things completely because we can’t tour. We’ve got a lot of stuff booked for next year but there’s no certainty that it’s going to happen. In fact, it’s a 50/50 chance – or maybe less – that these things can happen, even as far ahead as the end of next summer. No one knows what’s going to happen over the next few months, so on a logistical level, it’s very difficult.
Creatively, I think we’re managing to weather the storm because you don’t actually have to be with someone to record or even write, so we’re still focusing on releasing music.
Usually, when we’re planning to release music, it’s tied in with a plan to tour and promote it in various parts of the world and we can’t really do that at the minute. It’s interesting for someone who’s essentially been a baby for the last ten years and had every aspect of my life planned six months in advance because suddenly we have a meeting every other day now where we discuss “we’ve got this planned but this might happen, but we don’t really know…” so it’s a bit unsettling.
As you guys have already mastered the concept album – would you ever consider releasing an album recorded entirely in lockdown?
The work we’re doing at the minute, most of what we’ve got coming up from the next album, has been recorded during the lockdown. Our process, in terms of not only creativity but in the mechanics of recording, hasn’t been as disruptive as it might have been. I think there are certain bands that would get together in a rehearsal room and jam out ideas because that’s how they write, and then get in the studio to work together once they’ve got the songs – and we’ve never really worked like that.
The fact that Dan normally writes alone hasn’t been changed, obviously. There are times where we’ll all go into the studio and work as a band, but there are also times where I’ll pop in and just do some guitars or Kyle (Simmons) will go in and work on some production and keyboards.
In the beginning, when it was a super-duper strict lockdown, it was much harder. I think as things relaxed a bit, it got to the point where I could pop in – with responsible social distancing and a face mask – and record some bass, which wasn’t a terribly huge departure from how we normally work. This album has been recorded in lockdown, but I don’t think it’s an as drastic of a departure as it would be if our normal process was two weeks in a studio, all sweating on each other and stuff… that’s a horrible image, sorry!
The surprise release of ‘WHAT YOU GONNA DO???’ with Graham Coxon (of Blur) earlier this summer saw you take it up a notch sonically with a heavier sound, and on Doom Days, you delved into a more electronic and synth-driven sound. Are there any more particular sounds that you’d like to experiment with on your next project that fans wouldn’t expect to hear from Bastille?
I think the Graham Coxon one was much more of a breakaway from what we’ve done before. We always try to not be bound to a single sound or single genre. Inside our mind, our music is hugely diverse and ranges from rock to ballads. Every album we try to do something slightly different. Our first one had lots of strings, on the second one we had a lot more guitar and it was a lot more band-y sounding, and then the third album, as you say, was kind of electronicky.
For this one, it’s still coming together but I think there’s definitely a sound and a direction that hopefully shows we’ve moved things along a bit. I think it’s really interesting because we’ll do something and we’re like “this is so different to anything we’ve ever done!”, and everyone’s like “yeah, but it isn’t really though, it still sounds quite Dan singing over the rest of you playing”.
With the focus quickly shifting to 2021 – hopefully with the return of live music – would the band consider playing more smaller venues as you did with your tour early last year and the Doom Days Club Nights in December?
I think we’ll probably have to. It may well be that we come out of lockdown and they permit 200 capacity venues but not 10,000 which is completely reasonable in the midst of a global pandemic. In terms of actually doing that, they’re always so much fun.
As you said, at the end of last year we did those club shows, and it was one of the most fun tours. There’s something about them – the audience is right on top of you and it’s very like going back to the roots. All bands come up through the clubs and by doing those club tours, particularly back when you didn’t have the big touring ‘machine’ that we have now.
When you do a massive stadium – well, not stadium, we’re not that big! When you do an arena tour, you have tour buses, thirty crew members and catering staff – but those shows were amazing, I drove myself to pretty much all of them and got the train to the others. It was like being in a band again rather than being in this sort of whirlwind, manic, international thing.
We’d love to do them, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if next year – or even the year after – we had to do smaller venues. It’s something we’d deal with. It’s not something creatively – or in terms of the experience – negative, it’s just different.
I was one of the lucky few who made it down to Hackney, London, for your set of immersive and theatrical ‘Still Avoiding Tomorrow’ shows for the Doom Days album release. How much fun was it to be a part of that experience?
Oh yeah, that was so cool. That was only last year? That’s madness, wow! It was incredible. Weirdly, we met the people involved in the performance and theatre side of it around the same time that, completely inexplicably, I helped a friend of mine produce a play. I had this weird three or four-month period where I was heavily involved with the abstract, interactive theatre which was amazing.
It’s not a passion of mine, it’s not something I want to ever go into, but it was an amazing view into this incredibly creative world where you’d meet people who made musicians seem like boring fuddy-duddies. These people just have the wackiest ideas and are so creative. It’s a really amazing thing.
Tying that [the show] in with our release and having a gig, it just made the whole experience feel really exciting – really creative and really novel. We’ve done signings and secret gigs but to combine it with that sort of performance element, and to collaborate with and dip our toes into that world of something that we didn’t really know was so rewarding. Everyone involved was wonderful and it was such a special night.
I – this sounds really bad – don’t really remember the release of the other two albums, but for that one, I really remember that release party. I genuinely can’t remember what we did to release the first albums, no idea, probably just a gig. But yeah, it was something very cool and different, it was amazing.
Anyone who’s a fan of Bastille knows that your live gigs are always next-level – what do you miss the most about performing live?
It’s cheesy, but I miss the human interaction of it. I think people often think about how you play for 100,000 people or 10,000 people, and you play the big stages at Glastonbury and all these music festivals. And honestly, exclusively, the thing that’s amazing is connecting with the five people in front of you – the little area of the first three rows right directly in front of you – and actually having an interaction with them. I think performance should be a shared experience.
I think there’s a real risk of you becoming too up your own a**e, to use a very indelicate expression, but there’s a risk of there being that distance and that almost superciliousness about it, like you’re the performer and they’re there to worship you or whatever. For me, it’s why I love the smaller shows because you’re smiling at people and chatting with them between songs and things like that, it’s really nice. That immediate response can be quite abstract.
Being in a band, it’s this weird thing because it is a bit indulgent – I get to play guitar for a job and Dan gets to write his lyrics and spill his heart to the world. It can be a bit self-involved, but then when you go and perform it live it becomes this shared experience and this immediate reaction and you really get a sense of like this is a valuable thing.
You see people’s faces light up and you see people crying when you play certain songs. You get a sense that, actually, it is bringing joy to people. You have the direct interaction and the shared enjoyment of it all. I miss that – connecting with people.
Of course, 2020 has been a write-off – but I’ve heard rumours there’s a new album in the works to be released before the end of this year. Is there anything you can tell us about it?
There is an album in the works – we’re always working on new stuff. I, genuinely, couldn’t answer that. Not because I’m being coy or trying to keep the cards close to my chest, but we don’t know. We don’t know what’s going to happen yet. We had some meetings with our management yesterday or the day before over dinner and there was a lot of discussions on-going but they’re all dependent on what happens next. When you release music, it usually has an impendent tour strategy and radio strategy, and all these things – given that we can’t plan anything – are up in the air.
So, it’s going to come. It won’t be a hundred years from now, but we don’t know exactly when. We’re just aiming to keep writing and keep being creative. We were lucky that we were taking a year off live touring anyway this year, but we’re just looking at next year and we’re hoping that we can do some shows – it’s like everyone in the world. We just have to hope for the best and pray that things can improve because it’s a very testing time for everyone.
Listen to Bastille’s new single ‘survivin’’ here or watch the official video below.
