Why Bastille is More Than Just "Pompeii"

by Zac Bentz

Does anyone remember Bastille? That pop band from 2013 that had one song absolutely explode (you know the one) and then kind of vanished from the zeitgeist without much fanfare? If you do, it’s probably because of “Pompeii,” and once that song disappeared after basically defining the early 2010s pop scene, you probably haven’t given them much thought since. Unless you have, in which case, you’ve come to the right place.

I passionately, wholeheartedly, unironically love Bastille. Any time I bring that up in conversation, I’m either met with a neutral “okay,” a confused “who?” or a somewhat teasing “really?” And yeah, I do. I can’t think of a single artist more formative at a point in my life where I needed art to cling to than Dan Smith. I think he’s a remarkable songwriter, and while I’ll always love their earlier albums the most, I think the band is still putting out some of their best work.

I first started listening in 7th grade, my gateway song obviously being “Pompeii.” But it wasn’t long before I began exploring the various corners of what at that point was their only album, Bad Blood, and its expanded edition, All This Bad Blood. Tracks like “Weight of Living,” “These Streets,” “Laughter Lines,” “The Silence,” “Poet,” and “Sleepsong” became indistinguishable from that very specific point in my life – specifically the summer between 7th and 8th grade. I would play them every night over the stereo system as my dad, my brother and I all fell asleep in the living room. I would play them while reading my favorite book for the first time. I would listen to remixes on the bus to school. I had their Other People’s Heartache Pt. III mixtape sountracking some of the most surreal nights of my life, like sneaking down our quarter-mile winding driveway in the middle of the night to be picked up by my mom, just in case. I went deep.

When their second album finally released in 2016, I was about two days into what would ultimately become seven months of daily panic attacks, constant debilitating anxiety, and weekly trips to the ER. Wild World became the one thing that could pull me out, re-center me, and remind me that the world existed outside my body, and for months it was my secret weapon I’d deploy whenever I felt like I needed something to steady myself against. I filled notebooks with transcribed lyrics and tried to learn the chords to all my favorite songs on the piano – more reassuring than just listening to them was being able to play them and make them my own.

For a long time, listening to Wild World pulled me right back into that stretch of time spent curled up on my bed, afraid to face the world outside the house, but since then I’ve been able to form a new bond with it separate from that trauma. It’s such an important body of work to me, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite albums ever made.

I’m going to be honest – I think their third record, Doom Days, is fine. Maybe I’d spent too much time away from them when it dropped. Maybe if it had been around back in 2014, I would hold it in as high regard as I hold Bad Blood. But I don’t know. It just feels corny. It’s all about partying and getting drunk, and the urge to escape the world and pretend everything’s fine for a night. Like, sure. Not that interesting of a concept, and it just takes itself soooo seriously. It’s still got a couple bangers though. “The Waves” and “Million Pieces” feel as classic Bastille as you can get, so I’ll give it that. And the extended “This Got Out Of Hand Edition” has some really phenomenal deep cuts – the whole second part of the record feels like a deep dive through the band’s history. “Final Hour,” “Admit Defeat,” and “Good Lesson” are genuinely perfect little guilty-pleasure pop songs. It’s like the term was designed for them. The lyrics are cringy as hell, but, like, absolutely killer pop melodies and production. No one else could make me sing along to the line, “Drunk lust is blind, love. Can’t choose your type.”

They put out an EP called Goosebumps in 2020 that actually got a bit of traction. It was actually pretty stellar, at least compared to Doom Days. It boasted a straight-on electric guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll cut with Graham Coxon of Blur with a chorus that absolutely SHREDS, as well as "survivin’", maybe one of the catchiest tracks they’ve ever written. It’s a perfect little pop-funk cut that clocks in at just under 3 minutes. It rules.

The singles leading up to the release of their fourth record in February made me nervous – I really didn’t like any of them on first listen. I was so worried that my love for the band was fading, that they would never reach the highs I remembered from back in middle school. I was starting to come to terms with the fact that it was probably time to move on. But then, on January 14, 2022, they released “Shut Off The Lights,” and all my hope was rekindled. It was the most I’d enjoyed a Bastille release since Wild World, and I knew that even if the record had even one song that was anywhere near this level, it would all be worth it.

Lo and behold, Give Me The Future is the tightest, most concise, most unabashedly FUN record they’ve ever made, and I fell head-over-heels in love with it on first listen. The whole thing. All the songs that had fallen flat for me as singles suddenly clicked for me in the context of its loose techno-dystopia conceptualism. It clocks in at, like, half an hour, and it’s honestly?? one of the most perfectly paced records I think I’ve ever listened to. The lyrics are just as cringy as Doom Days, but it has SO much more fun with its concept and isn’t afraid to go absolutely off-the rails (it’s got a Riz Ahmed spoken-word guest feature where he waxes poetic about the impending AI singularity, and it’s got Dan singing shit like THIS!!!!!!!: 

Baby, AI is the messiah
My machine’s learned all my kinks and desires
Virtual porn, airbrush my jaw
Are we having fun yet? 

I love this record. "Back To The Future" and "Club 57" are two of my favorite Bastille songs of all time, genuinely. I’m so glad they’re back on their silly, self-serious bubblegum pop bullshit, and I can’t wait for another record like this.  

As silly and surface-level as Bastille can be, I love them, and they're genuinely very important to me. My dad and I would listen to them together when he was still alive, and they were there for me after he died and I was left to rebuild myself. My mom and brother and I would blast their cover of "The Rhythm of the Night" on our road trips down to California. Their perfectly-arranged pop melodies never fail to put me in a good mood, and their early work is genuinely some of the best pop music of its era. I think "Pompeii" was so omnipresent and overplayed that it turned a lot of people off from giving the rest of their output a chance. But you should give it a chance. 

Yeah, I love Bastille, and you should too.