WRITING THE SCRIPT
By Tom Lanham
photo by Piczo
D
an Smith can’t help it. He’s one
contemporary music artist that
always finds himself thinking visu-
ally, like a Barry Sonnenfeld-edgy cine-
matographer, giddily filling every frame
with kinetic action. So his British band
Bastille isn’t just one-dimensional — it can
be appreciated on multiple sensory levels,
all the way down to its carefully-situated
album cover photos that always resemble
movie posters. It started in 2013 with Bad
Blood, Bastille’s smash debut that featured
a man running terrified in car headlights a
la David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” plus
film-inspired tracks like “Laura Palmer”
and “Things We Lost in the Fire” alongside
the signature breakthrough hit “Pompeii.”
The frontispiece of the new third effort
Doom Days, is less specific — showing a
tangle of young limbs on a blanketed
motel room bed around dawn. Or dusk,
given that it’s a concept album a la
Scorsese’s “After Hours” concerning the
protagonist’s wild adventures one London
night. And, of course, everything he sees.
But it’s complicated, says Smith, who
intended the first three records to stand as
a tangible trilogy. “So I wanted this latest
cover to almost feel like a classic painting
with a modern twist, something that was
suggestive enough for people to impose
their own story onto it,” he says. “There
are three people, two men, and a woman,
on the bed, and they could be partied out,
or it could be the end of a sexual encounter,
or it could dissolve into whatever you
want it to be. But they’re choosing to have
an escapist night while the world is burn-
ing, all the way through to the end of the
night. The album is a version of that old
story.” Can’t picture what Smith is talking
about, visually? Don’t worry. Like any
good movie director, he’s happy to stop
and explain his work. (See below).
Naturally, Bastille began as a one-man
band, with Smith adding members to taste
as his sound expanded. By 2014, thanks to
the tribal Top 10 UK hit "Pompeii,” the
group had opened for stadium superstars
Muse, reissued by popular demand its
debut in a bonus-track edition as All This
Bad Blood, and won a Brit Award for Best
Breakthrough Act.
On Doom Days, Smith ups the ante, cre-
ating a symphonic piece that feels like one,
although it’s subdivided into compact
anthems that tell the night-on-the-town
tale, from the opening chimer — and party
launcher — “Quarter Past Midnight.” The
set soon swerves into a sinister “Bad
22 illinoisentertainer.com october 2019
Decisions," then to darker anthems “4
A.M.," “Nocturnal Creatures,” and the for-
lorn title cut. A fizzy feel-good ballad “Joy”
closes the record gradually and leaves you
wanting more. More bouncy synth
rhythms. More literate, thought-provoking
lyrics. And more of Smith’s war-wondrous
marble, which is genuinely idiosyncratic,
almost to a Bryan Ferry degree.
ILLINOIS ENTERTAINER: Springsteen
just released his latest Western Stars
album, but surprisingly, there are not a
mention of Trump, just subtly symphonic
Laurel Canyon-y ballads that feel like the
perfect panacea for today’s politically
grim times. Doom Days is kind of the
same.
DAN SMITH: I guess there’s one direct
reference, but even that is relatively
ambiguous. I wanted the album to feel
very much a part of 2019, and of this
moment in the world. But I wanted it to be
a quite personal story, stitched together
with the language of today, like rioting and
Brexit so that the personal turmoil can
reach you on a few levels — through the
literal story of the night, or as a slightly
broader generational thing. And as a Brit
who’s lived through what this country’s
experienced over the last three years, it
would be weird to not talk about Brexit,
but we also wanted the album to tap into
other famous, hedonistic pop-cultural nar-
ratives, as well, because we wanted the
album to fundamentally be this quite inti-
mate, personal escapist record. But it sort
of morphed into something else over a
couple of years. Initially, it was going to be
like this rave record, about total abandon.
But then other language trickled in.
IE: What was going on in your personal
life then? A breakup?
DS: Yeah... My girlfriend and I broke up.
It was after a long bit of touring, and we
finally made it back to London afterward,
and it was the first time we’d been in one
place for about five years. So I’d kind of
planned ahead for this time at home, and I
had this version in my head about what it
would be like, and obviously, it’s so bril-
liant that we get to travel, but we also
missed home, as well. So it was quite inter-
esting to me — the imagined home and
then the reality of it after we got back. So I
was going out all the time or having peo-
ple over to the house. It was a really fun
period, and I started thinking about
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