News October 27, 2015

Q ’n’ A: Bastille

With the London four-piece currently taking over Australian airwaves with a handy of hooky singles, we thought now was a fine time to catch up with Bastille’s Dan Smith to chat Pompeii and beyond.

Pompeii really blew up worldwide. Did you expect that particular single to do so well for you?
No, we never imagined that Pompeii would do what it has done. It was just another one of our songs that I’d written in my room and which we’d been playing at our gigs over the last year or so. Now it seems to have taken on a bit of a life of its own.

It’s been a few months now since Bad Blood was released. What are your feeling towards the record now?
I haven’t listened to it in ages, but we play it nearly every night at gigs and stuff and it’s great to be able to play to people who know it.

It’s hard to pinpoint many explicit influences on the record. Who were you listening to when writing and recording, and what sonic touchstones did you have?
The influences are pretty wide. I was listening to Brooklyn indie bands like Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend, but also film scores and soundtracks, and older bands like Simon & Garfunkel and The Beach Boys for harmonies. I also listen to quite a bit of hip hop and electronic producers too. I love interesting singer songwriters who write about unusual things, people like Anthony & The Johnsons and Regina Spektor, Bon Iver. Sorry, that just became a bit of a list. We basically wanted to make a collection of hopefully good songs, touching on loads of influences be they live, orchestral, electronic or whatever.

The album has already spawned five singles, have you started to think about album #2? Are you worried about second guessing yourself next time around, now there’s a bit of pressure/an audience?
We’ve always approached each song individually, trying to make it as good as it can be but also trying to do something a bit different with each one – be it using different sounds or production techniques. For that reason I think we’re pretty relaxed about the next album. The most important thing is to make a bunch of songs that we like and to try and have fun recording them.

Any weird pockets of the world where you have been successful that you never thought would respond to your music?
I’m pretty pessimistic and have always been dooming our band to failure, so to be honest I’m pretty surprised that anyone responded to it. We never really imagined being able to release music or gig outside of England, so find it crazy that people as far away as Oz or South Africa have bought Pompeii. We seem to being doing quite well in Italy as well which we weren’t expecting, but probably only because it just hadn’t even occurred to us that that was a possibility.