Bastille, Somerset House Summer Series, London

It’s well over a year since the release of debut effort Bad Blood, and Bastille are beginning to live up to their name (in that they’re a band whose grasp of the UK’s musical imagination is starting to resemble a 14^th century French fortress). So much so that I don’t suppose it’ll be long until the words ‘Bastille Day’ stop having anything to do with the Revolution altogether. It’ll just be a day when everybody collectively puts on ‘Pompeii’ and screams things about ‘being an optimist’ at each other.

Anyway, tonight’s headline outing—which, incidentally, takes place the day after the actual Bastille Day—is part of the capital’s Somerset House gig series, and the organisers have done very well to tick all the right boxes. The very central venue is big enough and grand enough to make tonight’s show feel like ‘an event’ without the whole thing becoming hollow, and the bands (other highlights include Daughter, Chvrches and Franz Ferdinand) tend to be former fringe concerns that have long-since transferred into mainstream consciousness, which ensures a sell-out.

Non-stop touring has certainly taught the London four-piece a trick or two about working an audience into putty. Opening with ‘Bad Blood’s’ Police-poaching faux-reggae makes for an infectious wordless sing-along right off the bat, and singer Dan Smith’s ceremonious floor-tom pounding can inspire a surge of energy at the drop of a hat. Their cover of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’, threaded through with the xx’s ‘Angels’, and tonight with a guest appearance from Ella Eyre thrown into the mix, is a final coup de grace to an audience already on the ropes. Collective euphoria gets another boost when the rest of the band takes a minute to celebrate Smith’s birthday (turns out Bastille are so-called because Smith was born on the French national holiday).

Still, this Bastille live show is going to do nothing to dispel any Coldplay comparisons – crowd-pleasing choruses are aplenty, sure, but the similarities are in the divisions of labour more than anything else. In much the same way that Chris Martin’s limping rooster-hop makes an attempt at showmanship despite his band-mates’ rigor mortis, Smith spends the evening tirelessly gyrating and lurching every which way while the other three are content to quietly clock in and out. Not that the shrieks and howls of this young audience seem to suggest they care – Smith-centric ballad ‘Oblivion’ is met with absolute adoration.

All in all, tonight’s performance is fairly free of surprises. The four-piece save big-hitters like ‘Flaws’ and ‘Pompeii’ for the apex of the show, keeping tongues wagging for the big payoff. And it works: by the end at least, the audience are every bit as emphatic as you might expect them to be. No sign of the mob storming the fortress walls just yet.