The pop boys have stepped up to the big leagues
In case you didn’t realise, we think that Bastille are pretty flippin’ good. We saw them a couple of months ago at the Apple Music Festival, and we came away convinced that they were one of the best live bands in the country.
Well, we’re not sure how, but they’ve somehow managed to get even better since then. We went down to their sold-out show at Plymouth Pavilions a couple of weeks ago, and we were seriously, seriously impressed. Here’s why:
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Dan Smith knows how to work a big crowd
First things first, we need to talk about Dan Smith. A few weeks ago, we told you that ‘the sight of a six-foot-tall Englishman flailing around the stage while singing a song about a Twin Peaks character is something that we don’t think we’ll ever forget’.
Well, we saw it again in Plymouth, and it’s even better the second time around. Okay, so we’ll admit that Dan is not the most coordinated dancer in the world, but what that does mean is that he’s an absolute joy to watch. He’s taken the role of the arena-pop frontman in his stride, and it’s his talent that’s the highlight of the band’s set.
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Their new album is as good as their debut
Okay, so everybody knows that Pompeii is a banger, but it takes more than one good song to pull off a show of this scale. Fortunately, Bastille have got two albums’ worth of good songs. In fact, we’d even go so far as to argue that their new album is even better than their first; sure, the first album had Laura Palmer, Flaws, and Icarus, but their new one’s got Fake It, Send Them Off!, and Good Grief. Not bad, eh?
Our point is this: they may not have been around for that long, but they’ve already got more than enough arena-filling anthems to fill even the biggest venue, and they had absolutely no concerns with cramming them all in to a nearly two-hour-long set.
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Their support acts were amazing
In our eyes, it’s only fair that a great live band should have a stellar supporting line-up to open their show for them. Fortunately, that’s just what Bastille had at Plymouth Pavilions. The one-two sucker-punch of indie-rockers Childcare and funky electro-pop man Rationale was more than enough to get the capacity crowd warmed up for the main event, and we couldn’t recommend them both highly enough.
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At the end of the day, they’ve still got Pompeii
Let’s be honest here: you can hate Bastille as much as you like, but you can’t deny that this is a solid-gold piece of 10/10 pop perfection. If nothing else, it’s worth going to see them just so you can experience this for yourself:
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