Living in a post-truth era is right out of 1984
Bastille frontman Dan Smith tells ALEX GREEN about the dystopian vision behind their new album – and how its reality is not so different from our own
“WE wanted to make a big, escapist, weird, sci-fi pop album – and I think we have,” says Bastille frontman Dan Smith.
Since their breakthrough single Pompeii, detailing a conversation between two victims of the infamous volcanic eruption, was released in 2013, the indie-pop band have continually committed themselves to high concepts.
Their last album, Doom Days, was about friends who party the night away as the apocalypse takes place outside their closed curtains (it neatly predicted the pandemic).
Give Me The Future, their new album, tackles even more pertinent topics: virtual reality, fake news, our addiction to our mobile phones, lying world leaders and a general sense of existential dread. Sounds fun, right? Thankfully, Dan and co have paired these weighty topics with ambitious, wide-screen pop.
The band, which began in 2010 as a solo project by Dan, wanted to make an album about escapism – about the “weird conscious and subconscious coping mechanisms of escaping the boredom of life, things you don’t want to address or maybe old traumas”. This could be through technology such as the internet or virtual reality, or just simple daydreaming.
“As the last two years progressed, the language of pandemics and lockdowns and quarantines – this was the language of dystopian movies and Hollywood,” says Dan. “It wasn’t the language of real life. That’s obviously been a fascinating shift for everyone.
“But also being at home so much, our already quite dependent relationship on technology has been heightened so intensely. And that’s fascinating. It’s been an incredible lifeline for so many people who are isolated.”
Dan appears to have unlimited energy but suffers from stage fright, anxiety and a poor relationship with sleep. Outside the band he is a songwriter for other pop acts, most recently Lewis Capaldi, and always seems to have various creative projects on the go.
“The point with the album was we wanted to explore all these themes,” ” he explains. “The fact that real life at t the moment can feel like a dystopian n novel. But also address the fact that t you can get really bogged down in n that.
“You can go down a wormhole of f anxiety about the state of the world d and the future of the world because e we’re confronted by it all the time in n the news. But that’s not particularly y healthy and that’s no way to live all l the time. And as much as it’s really y important to know what’s going on n and be informed, it’s also really y important to just try to live your life e and enjoy what you can.”
Dan says that, despite being made e during an isolating time, Give Me e The Future is a collaborative record.
One evening on Zoom with the LA-based Swedish songwriter and producer Rami Yacoub – who cowrote ...Baby One More Time for Britney Spears – led to three songs. “That wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the technology,” he muses. “But elsewhere on the album we are trying to have an open conversation about our relationship with technology. “Not from a judgmental perspective, because ultimately, in some ways, it’s amazing. And it opens incredible opportunities of communication and community in what can be a really lonely life. But in other ways it can be really corrupting and addictive. “The point is, it’s not binary and we don’t come with a judgment at all. That’s just how life is now, which is pretty surreal and often feels like science-fiction.”
Oscar-nominated actor and rapper Riz Ahmed delivers a spoken word piece titled Promises near the halfway point of the album.
“He really appreciated that it’s pop music but it’s having difficult conversations at points and addressing nuanced issues,” Dan recalls.
“I think he really liked that. So he listens to the album where it was at, and I explained that it would come at quite an intimate moment in the album. He sent back this unbelievable poem. I couldn’t really have asked for any more. We’re all completely obsessed with it.”
Music has uprooted Dan but also given him purpose – and the album tackles how technology has both helped and hindered him personally.
“All my sleep habits are terrible,” he admits. “In a previous life, we would travel all the time so we were jumping around time zones. Sleeping on a moving tour bus as a light sleeper isn’t amazing... I’m terrible at being on my yp phone and reading g stuff before
going to bed.
“Because for me, my chronic phone addiction began when we started touring and the band took over our lives in this amazing but also quite uprooting way. I was away from home and really didn’t want to feel I was missing out on what all my mates were up to.
“That was the advent of WhatsApp starting and that allowed me to feel part of everything going on at home. It’s a double-edged sword.”
Dan’s relationship with technology – including his phone – bleeds into the lyrics.
“Because previously we would always be away a lot, I’ve always been, unfortunately, quite surgically attached to my phone. It’s your communication to home, it’s the music you listen to, it’s the news you read, it’s your books potentially. It’s the s*** you want to scroll through online to distract yourself.
“It’s so interesting how this thing we have in our palm has managed to edge into pretty much every corner of life in such a surreal way. I definitely spend too much time on my phone, because it is so many things in one device.”
Bastille are releasing Give Me The Future during unsettled political times and Dan looks to the future with a combination of optimism and resignation.
“Living through the last five, six or seven years – since 2016 basically,” he offers. “There’ve been huge shifts in politics and the people in power. People will trace back to technology the modern phenomenon of choosing what truth to believe.
“The idea of living in a post-truth era is literally like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s wild. It’s insane. That’s unfortunately – like with a lot of the other things on the album – just the reality of modern life as it is.” ■ Give Me The Future by