Bastille started writing their fourth album, a concept piece about the technology takeover, just before we really did start staying at home and doing almost everything through screens. There’s nothing in any of these songs about us all getting puppies, but otherwise predicting the near future is bountiful territory. On the title track, frontman Dan Smith seems to be enjoying the metaverse Mark Zuckerberg promised us in that video about the Facebook rebrand: “Why would we leave?/Miles and miles of fake beauty,” he sings over emotional strings.
In some of the videos that have accompanied the singles so far, the darker side of computerised reality comes across more clearly. Semi-conscious characters slump on the floor, a small patch glowing on the side of their heads, and visualise gravity-free cityscapes. But Smith is a self-confessed nerd and film buff (there are namechecks for Back to the Future and Blade Runner here, while the videos sit nicely beside the Matrix reboot) and it’s obvious another side of him thinks it would be pretty cool to have a robot girlfriend. “Now us freaks and geeks can rule the world, have everything/Doesn’t matter if it’s real,” he announces on Stay Awake.
He’s had a strong ear for anthemic pop since Bastille’s breakthrough hit, Pompeii, so almost everything here sounds like too much fun to be a dystopian nightmare. Club 57’s propulsive beats and whistling couldn’t be jollier, and gospel choirs like the one that appears on the closing song, Future Holds, don’t tend to generate unease.
Artists who have urged us to worry about what computers will do next haven’t always hit the mark. Radiohead successfully channelled pre-Millennial tension on OK Computer and Kid A, but Arcade Fire seemed to be stating the obvious on Everything Now in 2017, and Dave Eggers got mixed reviews for his latest work of dystopian fiction, The Every.
Here, both the darkest and lightest moments, and the best songs, come when Smith steps away from his main theme. No Bad Days is about an aunt who had a voluntary assisted death in Australia, and achieves a powerful impact with minimal instrumentation. In contrast, Shut Off the Lights is a fantastic groove, slinking along on the lightest of guitar lines. It’s simply about the joy of dancing with a loved one, presumably in real life. “No talk of the future now,” Smith sings. When that weight is lifted, the band is at its best.
