Live Review: Bastille - The O2, London 07/04/2022
London boys Bastille got the audience grooving through the gloom at The O2 Arena on Thursday, in a show primed for the present while dwelling on the complexities of the future.
Fusing dark with positivity, and good vibes with the doom-laden present (and future), it’s what the ‘Pompeii’ hitmakers have always done – and brought them back to the North Greenwich arena Dan Smith and co previously headlined in 2016.
Bastille’s show opened with Plato’s statement “The beginning is the most important part of what’s to come”. It set up nicely for the headliner’s pop exploration of the future, but omits the full tale, which really began with the supports.
Openers The Native won over the early crowd with their efficient five-piece set-up. They made a solid noise in the biggest venue they’ve played, outing new song ‘All Or Nothing’, and closing with ‘Time’, a song singer Charlie Noordewier revealed they “always wanted to play at The O2”.
Jack Garratt and his two-piece band filled the arena with 50 minutes of music mostly taken from his studio albums, inspiring an audience clap-along to ‘Breathe Life’. While unimpressed with the crowd’s response when introducing a new song (“thank you, seven of you”), that quickly changed when ‘Hands Go Up’ started. An incoming Rudimental track, with spoken verses and a sparkling 70s-style chorus, - “When the hands go up, the love comes down, the love comes down” –it may prove to be inescapable upon release.
Bastille’s set started with ‘Stay Awake?’, which saw vocalist Dan Smith emerge at the top of the set-up before jumping down the plus-laden stage. In the pop-fuelled 100 minutes that followed, Dan removing – and then reapplying – his hoody was the only costume change.
The show’s course included ten songs from Bastille’s fourth album ‘Give Me The Future’, which hit number one earlier this year. The audience respected the new material, particularly ‘Plug In…’, complete with on-screen lyrics, and saw Oscar-winning actor Riz Ahmed appearing on stage for his monologue from album track ‘Promises’.
There was an increase in crowd energy for older hits though, like the early appearance of a revamped ‘Things We Lost In The Fire’, and 2016’s ‘Good Grief’, which got fans in the seats moving.
The digital world of “Future Inc.” informed the on-stage visuals, and even the presence of “loading screens” or “session complete” messages helped to make the show gel together, rather than feeling like separate parts, which I hope was the intention.
The band largely stuck to their best skills, grooving and moving along with an additional sax man and two backing vocalists. They only moved from this plan for the stripped back ‘4AM’, and for Marshmello-collab ‘Happier’, which saw Dan run his way through the standing crowd.
“It’s the surrealest commute to The O2” Londoner Dan revealed in the intro to ‘Pompeii’. Absolute Radio’s biggest song of the 2010s, the track has been inescapable since 2013. It provides a cathartic release to the end of the main set, the crowd proudly echoing back that ‘eh-eh-oh, eh-oh’ sound.
‘Shut Off The Lights’ saw Bastille invite Jack Garratt and Riz Ahmed back on stage, along with the actor’s nephew. It’s a brave choice, but concludes the night with an inevitable confetti cannon and a message which sums up the band’s raison d’etre: “Shut off the lights, we don’t need them to dance”.
The core contradictions at the heart of Bastille – introverted thoughts blown up to the biggest scale, the future being here on another windy Thursday – are central to what makes modern life so weird, but also makes for an enjoyable night, and an epic stage show.
Words by Samuel Draper
Photographer by Abigail Shii
