Bastille's Dan Smith talks ahead of Birmingham shows

The tour will feature two dates on Tuesday and Wednesday at Birmingham’s O2 Academy.

Frontman Dan Smith says: “We’ve spent most of this last year working on loads of new music and touring different versions of our songs so now we’re excited to head back out and revisit more intimate rooms and play a bunch of new songs in the lead up to our new album.”

As one of the nation’s favourite live acts, the four-piece spent the summer playing UK and international festivals including headline slots at Wilderness and MTV’s Ocean City Sounds. They also teamed up with Marshmello to release one of the year’s biggest international hits, the poignant yet euphoric, Happier. The band’s fourth UK top five single, a US top 10 and global top three, it scored more than 101 million streams in a matter of weeks.

The past half-decade has certainly been a whirlwind for the four-piece: frontman and lyricist Dan, keyboardist Kyle Simmons, bassist and guitarist Will Farquarson and drummer Chris Wood. They have played more than 500 shows across six continents, including the critically acclaimed ReOrchestrated tour, and have amassed 15 million single sales and six million album sales globally.

Both Bad Blood and its follow-up, Wild World, reached No.1 in the UK and the top 10 in the US, and their music has been streamed a staggering 3.5 billion times.

They’ve not gone without awards recognition either: after winning British Breakthrough Act at the BRITs, the band has earned Grammy, AMA and MTV Europe Awards nominations.

The band dropped new music in spring last year with the single Quarter Past Midnight.

Dan enjoyed writing and production work with other people. At the band’s studio, they’d find such bands as The Wombats, Rory Graham (Rag’n’Bone Man) and more. “There was a point working on our album, and he was in here writing and making new music, and it just felt exactly what we wanted to make. To have done that was really cool.”

“We’re at that rare point where we put the album to bed then got distracted by the tour. We’ve done album artwork, shot a video… it’s that nice honeymoon period where you’ve got this album and you’re living with it. And I guess now people will hear it soon.”

The band’s second album, Wild World, featured fewer singles than fans might have expected and the pattern will change with the soon-to-be released Doom Days.

“On the last album that was a thing we were a bit frustrated by. I feel like we were really spoiled on our first album and released about eight singles in the UK.

“By the second one it was a different time, but there were songs like ‘Warmth’ that I really felt should have been a single. But that’s how it was. Quarter Past Midnight as the opening track is like the beginning of the story and sets the tone for that moment of the night.

“Hopefully the album works on a few levels. It’s more personal, potentially metaphorical for other things that are happening. I definitely wanted this album to feel a lot more intimate.”

artistic change

The band were keen to make an artistic change for their third album and looked back at the way a number of their heroes developed.

Dan added: “Looking back to artists that I love like Bowie, the Beatles and Kate Bush, they would have defined eras of their careers. We wanted to make this a distinct era for us.

“We’ve very loosely gone back to music that we love from the 90s and wanted it to feel euphoric but have that trashiness that came with that era of music.

“We wanted to make an album that was about escapism and all the things that happen at night time. The album loosely charts the course of a night out and all the euphoric highs, the lows, the blurriness and the good and bad that happens.

“Quarter Past Midnight is the opening of the album and we wanted to kick things off at that point in the night where some are peeling off home and others are determined to keep on going and throw themselves head first into whatever’s going to happen.”

Bastille formed in 2010 and was initially a solo project by Dan Smith which later expanded to include the other members of the band.

After independently releasing a debut single and a self-released EP, the band signed to Virgin Records and their first studio album, Bad Blood, entered the UK albums chart at number one and included the hit single Pompeii, which peaked at number two on the UK singles chart. The band was nominated for four Brit Awards at the 2014 ceremony, winning the British Breakthrough Act.

Doom Days is all about propelling the band forward on the next leg of their journey.

Dan said: “There’s something about grounding it in the nighttime… it’s an interesting space, everyone’s emotions are charged, people do good and bad things, make mistakes, meet people… there’s so much room for stories.

“That was important to me, having spent two years playing a record that was quite full of angst and confusion about how to compute everything, and filter the news and world events and personal stuff. Particularly with the visuals that accompanied the tour.

“I’m super proud of it… I loved it so much, but I definitely felt like I didn’t want that to define who we are as a band.”

By Andy Richardson