Maebh Springbett
On 14th January the indie-pop band Bastille released their new single Shut Off the Lights, the latest preview of their upcoming album Give Me the Future set for 4th February.
Since their formation in London in 2010, Bastille – comprised of frontman Dan Smith, keyboardist Kyle Simmons, bassist and guitarist Will Farquarson, and drummer Chris ‘Woody’ Wood – have become a hallmark in British music. Their first studio album ‘Bad Blood’ was released in 2013 and swiftly reached number one on the UK album charts. This was followed by boundary-breaking albums Wild World and Doom Days. As of 2021, the band has sold over eleven million albums worldwide.
‘It’s about intimacy and physical connection’
Bastille’s new single explores how we all feel consumed by our thoughts at times – ‘I’m lost in my head again’ – and the way in which an intimate connection with someone can be grounding and bring you back from the brink.
Smith explains; ‘Shut off the lights is about being pulled out of your future-fearing anxieties by the person you’re lying next to.’ Unlike other singles we have heard from the upcoming album ‘It’s about intimacy and physical connection, rejecting our worries about life and the future for a minute, and unplugging from it all to really be present. It’s a fun, real, human moment in the middle of this big album.’
The single has a particular 80s feel and was inspired, in part, by Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ and other music of that era. Bastille also released a short video called ‘How We Made It’, exploring their process of creating the song in which Simmons aptly remarks ‘it’s a sexy song.’
‘True to form. the band have not just given their audience an album but an immersive experience.”
Shut Off the Lights is our last peek at Bastille’s album Give Me the Future before its release in February. Already, singles such as Distorted Light Beam, No Bad Days and the album’s title track Give Me the Future have revealed the futuristic/sci-fi concept behind the album where technology allows us to escape to another reality that is governed only by our imagination.
True to form, the band have not just given their audience an album but an immersive experience. We are transported to a dystopian landscape where FutureInc., a fictitious tech company, provides the means to leave reality behind and see where your own mind takes you. In this way Give Me the Future offers the same escapism as FutureInc. in Bastille’s envisioned universe.
To celebrate the release of their album, Bastille will first perform intimate gigs across the UK in support of independent record shops before kicking off their official UK tour in March and April and the US in May and June.
Image courtesy of Wes Hicks on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license can be found here.
Maebh Springbett
While Head of Entertainment for Empoword Journalism, Maebh works in the Careers department at the University of Reading. Their writing focuses on music and has been published by the likes of Music Is To Blame and Dead Good Music. They aspire to work in non-fiction publishing.