Cinematics
By Tom Lanham
photo by Wolf James
I
t was a summer ritual that British musician Dan Smith eagerly awaited every
year – the Glastonbury Festival, a weekend in late June where he and his friends
piled into a minivan and camped out onsite for three days of musical mayhem.
And he was just as excited this year, even
though he arrived in a tour bus with his
bandmates in the multiplatinum-selling
alternative outfit he fronts, Bastille, and
was promptly guided to the exclusive
artist-only parking lot backstage. The
group had an agenda, with new songs
from its upcoming sophomore release Wild
World to introduce to the massive crowd –
like an undulating “Send Them Off!,” the
jittery, synth-cascaded “Fake It,” a funereal
homage to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood
called “Four Walls (The Ballad of Perry
Smith),” the grinding, guitar-spiked
“Blame,” and its current single, a conversely finger-popping treatise on death dubbed
“Good Grief.” And the whole annual experience was nearly ruined by a single news
bulletin.
That Friday, June 24, as Glasto was
revving its mighty multiple-performer
engine, Smith – along with the rest of his
countrymen – awoke to learn that a fearful,
xenophobic England had voted in the
hotly contested Brexit referendum to leave
the European Union. It would lead to the
abrupt resignation of Prime Minister
David Cameron (who had urged his constituency to remain), the rise of former
House Secretary Theresa May to the position, after she herself had overseen immigration policies like what were sneeringly
dubbed Go Home vans – vehicles that
traveled the United Kingdom urging illegal immigrants to self-deport. “And to
wake up with this shitty news? It was quite
incomprehensible for a lot of British people,” sighs Smith, who had played an EUreferendum event a few days before, hosted by actress/activist Lily Cole.
Then Smith, 30, had a revelation. The
shock of the Brexit outcome – which many
had simply assumed was too implausible
to pass, akin to an actual Donald Trump
presidency taking place in America – was a
wake-up call to a magical, ephemeral
essence that he’d nearly forgotten in the
three years it took to carefully construct
Wild World. “It was a timely reminder of
how things like music and festivals –
amongst the many other reasons why
they’re amazing – can also just be quite a
wonderful escape,” he says. “And a distraction from stuff like (Brexit), which we
all have to confront heavily, head on. So we
were like, ‘Oh, my God! This is completely
unbelievable, totally mental!’ But for the
rest of the weekend, we thought, ‘Fuck!
We’re at Glastonbury! We’ll deal with it on
Monday!’”
It’s no secret that Mike Judge’s dark
22 illinoisentertainer.com august 2016
comedy Idiocracym is actually, ironically
coming true, 490 years before he predicted
it would, 500 years in the future. The film
was gust-bustingly hilarious, initially, with
its depiction of ignorant people breeding
like rabbits, while smart couples decided
that now wasn’t such a good time to bring
a kid into the world. The result? When star
Luke Wilson, playing a man of average
intelligence from our era, awakens from
cryogenic slumber, everyone is watching a
Tosh.O–ish TV show called Ow! My Balls!
(wherein a guy keeps getting racked in the
nuts, over and over again) from their combination
La-Z-Boy
recliner/toilets.
Disputes are settled via Monster truck battles, the POTUS is a gold-toothed hip-hopper (played to outrageous – but still-believable effect – by Terry Crews), and everything is controlled by fast food chains, who
decide if you’re a worthy parent or not.
And Wilson – now the smartest man in the
world, by a long shot – promptly takes
advantage of his newfound position to
lead the bovine masses. Now? The movie
feels more uncomfortable than funny, as
humanity hurtles toward its own self-facilitated extinction. And under such dire circumstances – as people around the world
repeatedly vote against their own self
interests – a crucial question arises: Is the
creation of music, and art in general, simply more fiddling while our metaphorical
Rome is burning? Or is it the last bastion of
comfort and catharsis that humanity has
left, something that can – at least momentarily – elevate us to a higher, wiser plane?
Or maybe even provide some insight or
ultimate answers?
The deep-thinking Smith is fascinated
with that conundrum. A huge film fan, he
has, of course, seen Idiocracy several times,
and believes wholeheartedly that its preposterous scenario is rapidly coming to
pass. But he votes for catharsis over cataclysm. “I think with the music that I love,
and songs that I love, the ones that really
mean something to me, if somebody else
articulates something, or does something
in music that you hadn’t quite thought of
putting that way before? That’s the thing
that’s just amazing,” he sighs, momentarily pacified. “It is that rare comfort, that distraction, and being able to lose yourself in
something else.” He pauses. “Well, even
thought it may seem like you’re playing the
fiddle at first.”
And these are the bigger questions that
Smith seeks to address on Wild World, he
declares, defiantly. “It’s just about reacting
in a quite human way to everything that’s
going on, things that you see on the news
every day and in everyday life. I think it’s
hard to ignore the times that we live in,
and I guess there’s always crazy shit happening in the world. But at the moment, it
seems so relentless, and it can be totally
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