Anthemic digital pop enriched by classical music
Bastille Royal Albert Hall
‘We spend most of our time in rooms the size of a cupboard in south London, layering up sounds on a laptop,” announced Dan Smith. “So to get to do this is very special.” The Bastille frontman gestured around the crowded stage, where his
four-piece band was augmented by 30 or more classically trained musicians and singers at the Royal Albert Hall.
Whether through curiosity, boredom, gimmickry or simply delusions of grandeur, it is a cast iron rule of rock-and-roll that sooner or later every band has to play with an orchestra. Often it’s not a happy marriage. But Bastille offered pretty much a textbook example of how to incorporate classical music to expand and enrich their digital sound.
Drums and bass were kept restrained and low, allowing strings, percussion and horns to drive the rhythm. Synths subtly supplemented the swells and flows of violins or brassy rushes of sax and trumpet, instead of competing with them. Best of all was a 10-piece gospel choir, who offered wittily arranged a cappella versions of Bastille’s synth hooks, with high falsetto and soprano voices going places keyboards can only ever approximate. Smith himself is no slouch in the vocal department, punching his own soulful weight as lead vocalist.
It is possible that one of the reasons Bastille’s songs adapted so well to orchestration lies in a modesty of ambition. Bastille operate within the same kind of anthemic modern pop rock parameters as Coldplay and Keane but have a quality of polite restraint about them that make their peers look like hooligans.
Smith writes heartfelt, harmonically rich songs that have big hooks and interesting lyrics but follow very formal pop constructions. Here there was nothing that dared to stretch the orchestral pop form and perhaps reach for something transcendent. Once you had got over the novelty, all you could do was sink into the plush sound and sing along. It was entirely lovely and just a hair’s breadth from easy listening. But sometimes easy is all you want. It can make a very pleasant change to leave a big, emotional rock concert without your ears still ringing.