30 Apr Bastille Brings New Songs To SunFest Crowd

Posted at 11:58h in Blog by

Bastille wasn’t even due to play for another half an hour, but the crowd was already going crazy.

By 8:30 p.m. the crowd was screaming at the top of their lungs for the band’s roadies setting up its gear. In the center of the JetBlue stage was a drum set with BASTILLE across the bass drum head.

When the lights finally went out, the crowd was genuinely freaking out for the four piece English rock band. Bastille opened with its single, “Flaws,” which peaked at no. 7 on Billboard’s Rock Airplay chart in 2014.

Lead singer, Dan Smith, kicked off the song by singing it right in the middle of the crowd. You could barely see him, but would know where he was if you followed the audience’s screams.

Once Smith joined his three bandmates back on stage, he jumped everywhere — including drummer Chris “Woody” Wood’s drum platform and Smith’s own monitor.

“Hello, SunFest,” Smith said. “We are called Bastille, we’re here from London and it’s very nice to be here, considerably warmer than we’re used to.”

 

 

The band went on to play its song, “Laura Palmer,”  with Smith hitting his own set of tom drums up front. If you close your eyes (see what I did there?), it’s hard to believe Bastille is only comprised of four members. Between the synths, samples, extra percussion and triggers, it feels so much bigger.

But at the same, time, the band’s performance is still intimate — despite the thousands of people in the crowd. And even though the band has so many electronic whats-its and doo-dads, there’s no denying that Bastille is still indeed a rock band at its very core.

The group proved that as it performed a ton of new songs for its SunFest audience. Songs like “Send Them Off” — which isn’t released on any of the band’s albums yet, but has a following of its own on the internet through Tumblr and YouTube.

“If you want to pretend you know this song really well, that would be amazing,” Smith joked as the band performed yet another new track, this one called “Snakes.”

Bastille also played “Currents,” which only premiered at the beginning of this month.

 

— Clara (@smilethatsmile9) April 30, 2016

“It’s not often we get to see palm trees from the stage so this is awesome for us,” Smith said. “Or get to play in the middle of a road for that matter.” Lately, the band has been on the festival kick — the group is set to perform at Lollapalooza in July.

Smith, in a t-shirt, jeans and Converse thanked the audience for their affection and patience, asking that the light and sound techs bring the lights up so he could take a picture of the audience.

 

 

The group also threw in a surprise for the crowd when it covered TLC’s “No Scrubs,” but in a totally Bastille-ian way. Between violin tracks, pulsing drums and Smith’s gentle falsetto coming in and out of the verses, you almost forgot this wasn’t a Bastille song.

— Tracey Sullivan (@sullivan_tracey) April 30, 2016


“We’ll be back soon with our new album,” he promised, to cheers from the audience. “In the meantime, we’ll leave you with this.”

The band closed with its biggest hit, “Pompeii,” a Grammy nominated track that topped international charts and was featured everywhere in the media — from video games to an episode of Glee.

“Thank you so much,” Smith said. “Thank you for being so awesome to us, SunFest.”

 

 

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