Album Review: Bastille - Bad Blood
- Written by David Beech
London quartet Bastille have only been a band just under three years. However in that short space of time they've managed to notch up a slew of festival appearances, support slots and a number of their tracks have featured on adverts and TV programmes. Not only that, but they've managed to release an impressive amount of music as well; a seven inch, two extended plays, two mixtapes and, as of Monday March 4,their début album Bad Blood.
The opening track on Bad Blood is current single and the fourth to be released: 'Pompeii'. When I first heard this song on the radio, I hated it. Like, really hated it. After several listens however, it did that thing songs do; you begin to like something you hated with vehemence. Now I can't get enough of it. Put simply, it's infectious. The chorus is a huge sounding, uplifting affair, made all the better by some excellent background vocal harmonising throughout. Unsurprisingly 'Pompeii' is the band's highest charting single to date, reaching Number 2 earlier this year.
'Bad Blood' is the third track and coincidently the third single from the album and starts things off in a manner reminiscent of The Police. A chunky bass line rolls while upstrokes and a chorus of 'oohs' carry the song. Once again the chorus makes some impressive use of background vocal harmonies. Here vocalist Dan Smith sounds excellent, especially in the chorus, fortunate considering this is one of the album's strongest songs; if not the strongest, and his occasional affected annunciation grates quite heavily.
'Icarus' was the B-side to the band's first seven inch and tells the story of someone living life to it's fullest; to the point in which it becomes detrimental. Starting with a haunting introduction of chilling harmony and drum, the song has distinctly less 'pomp' than some of the other songs on Bad Blood and is all the better for it. Again, there's excellent background harmonies throughout as well as the introduction; one of Bastille's better idiosyncrasies. The latter half of the track makes fantastic use of a range of instruments, including piano and violin, making a nice change from the overt amount of synth featured on the album.
Bad Blood is by no means a bad album. The use of vocal harmonies give the songs an extra layer of depth that really make certain tracks stand out and it's clearly radio-friendly, given their chart success. The problem with the album is that most of the tracks just seem like filler in between the singles. Sure, these songs will do well commercially, but short of a couple of tracks, nothing really grabs your attention as it should, which is a shame. Obviously the band are enjoying what they do, and people are buying their music, but these days music needs something more to it than a sugary veneer if it's to have any real staying power and everything here but the singles falls slightly short.
Bad Blood was released on March 04 and is available from amazon