Review: Bastille, Colston Hall

There’s always something special about hearing the songs you love completely turned on their head, given a new breath of life and transformed into something unique but wholly recognisable. It’s always been the staple of a good cover song but rarely do you see an artist take their own music and completely reinvigorate it and that’s what made Bastille’s reorchestrated show so exceptional.

Bastille’s touring musician Charlie Barnes starts the reimagined show alone with his guitar. While he normally has the safety of laptops and loop stations there is little place to hide behind a guitar or a keyboard and this stripped-back set places all the focus on his voice. Straddling the line between pop and operatic there are definite notes of theatre in every falsetto and more than a touch of melodrama. It’s an accomplished but short set that lays an incredibly solid base for the evening.

Longtime friends and uni mates of Bastille’s Dan, To Kill a King, quickly follow on and there are few more suitable opening bands for this style of altered show. To Kill a King have long been a band to recreate their own music, with two acoustic EP’s being published on the run up to their recent third album.

Opening with Howling all five members ring out across the room through tightly intertwined harmonisation. They fill the room equally here as they did Thekla back in January and a much larger, mostly seated, crowd does little to faze them. Exposed versions of latest album highlights Good Old Days and Spiritual Dark Age give the impression that they could fill their own headline set of revamped tracks and reactions of the sold out Colston Hall suggest a market for it.

To the delighted shrieks of the crowd To Kill a King bring back Charlie and bring out Dan for last song, Choices. It’s a slow build, adding layers as it progresses providing equal time for all on stage to excel, culminating in a sweeping chorus that’s a stark reminder that simple arrangements can be just as formidable as the complex.

Bastille have never been a band content with becoming complacent in their own success. Their continuing VS (Other People’s Heartache) mixtape series has always been an avenue for them to flex their creative capabilities but it’s nothing compared to the complete rearrangement of their songs. They take to the stage as silhouettes from the spotlights behind and set the stage through Dan’s remark: “We are very lucky to be sharing the stage with some very talented musicians tonight.”

Tonight Bastille depart from pop and share the stage with a gospel choir and the string and brass section of an orchestra. Almost as though to get it out the way and simultaneously set expectations they begin with the track that sent them to success. When delivered through a choir Pompeii is so unlike it’s original that it could exist entirely separately and Dan’s vocals are the only thing linking it back.

Each song played here has been so cleverly deconstructed before being rebuilt that at times you forget how they sounded originally with both the orchestra and choir seeming organic. Before Two Evils Dan notes “for this tour we tried to turn everything on its head and do it differently and annoyingly we realised that this version of the song is way better.” It’s hard to disagree as a sax player takes centre stage bouncing of the harmonisation of the choir behind.

Tracks across the entire history of the band have been remastered. From No Angels off Other People’s Heartache PT 2 to their feature on Craig David’s I Know You and potentially their future. In the middle of the show Dan brings out frontman Ralph from To Kill a King and they perform a new song called Cut Her Down from their long gestating collaboration, Annie Oakley Hanging. It’s an interesting snippet of what promises to be a unique concept album but unfortunately they were unable to provide any dates for its release.

Fortunately for Bastille fans they did announce that a new album is “weeks away.” Whether this is a fourth instalment of their mixtape series or a follow up to 2016’s Wild World wasn’t revealed and to the disappointment of the crowd they didn’t play any new tracks. However with each song being transformed in a surprising and often breathtaking fashion there’s the sense that the crowd is eager to see what new revolution will be coming next and their 24 song set flies by surprisingly quickly.

Bastille have never been known to write particularly uplifting lyrics and it’s more noticeable than ever when backed by an orchestra. Dan remarks on this at the very end and says, “when making our list of songs we wanted to end with something uplifting, so this is the most optimistic song we have.” Weight of Living Part 1 plays and the stage is illuminated with an orange glow as we’re treated to one last glimpse at this intimate and exceptional reorchestrating.